Casting Shadows
by rickfan37
Summary: Persephone Snape is almost eleven and awaiting her Hogwarts letter impatiently. How do her parents react to her disappearance, and how is their relationship affected by their struggle to bring her home?
1. A Birthday

_All the usual disclaimers apply._

_This story is set eleven years after Snape In Love and Chasing Darkness Away. I have rated it R as it will address adult themes. I will try to update regularly but I am posting this as I write it which is a departure from my usual method of working._

_I do hope you enjoy it._

_RF_

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**_Casting Shadows_**

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**_By Rickfan37_**

**Chapter 1**

"Give it back!"

"Not until you say sorry!"

"Sor-_ry_, sor-_ry_!"

"You've got to _mean_ it, idiot!"

"Mum! Mum! Seffie called me an idiot and she won't give me back my Wicked Warlocks comic!"

A small boy with unruly brown hair and dark eyes jumped down from the high stool at the long oak table and made a run for the door, punching his sister in the side as he went. A tall, forbidding presence filled the opening, appearing silently as if from nowhere.

"And where do you think you're going, young man?"

The boy stopped in his tracks. "Hello, Dad! Er…you're home early!" he ventured.

Severus Snape arched one coldly expressive eyebrow and his son quaked. "On the contrary, Celsus. I would say that I arrived at precisely the right time."

The girl sitting at the kitchen table lifted the cause of their dispute to hide her face but could not stifle her snigger. Snape turned to her appraisingly. "Please explain yourselves, Persephone?"

"Uh-oh, you're in trouble!" Celsus said, sticking out his tongue in response to the angry glare from his elder sister.

"Hello, Father. Celsus left a toad in my bed and now there's slime everywhere."

"Hagrid told me to keep it safe!"

"Not in _my bed!"_

Snape shook his head in irritation and strode to the window, looking out into the orchard beyond.

"Where is your mother?"

Just then, Ella stepped in to the kitchen, flushed and smiling and carrying a large basket of apples, which she set down on the counter beside her husband.

"Severus!" she exclaimed, putting her hand on his arm and standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Love, what is it? Bad day?"

He grimaced and let her slip her arms around his waist, returning the gesture as her cheek rubbed against the row of buttons that decorated his otherwise plain black frock coat.

"Every day is a bad day," he rumbled. "My one consolation is that the year is nearly over and the dunderheads will soon leave me be for a few short, blissful weeks!"

Ella lifted her head and smiled, and he bent down to kiss her. It had been a long, eventful day and he had missed her.

"Eww, gross!" Persephone muttered in disgust, scraping back her chair and tossing the comic on to the table. "I'm going to my room."

"And I'm going next door!" announced Celsus importantly. "Auntie Hermione says she'll teach me all about swishing and flicking!"

"What? Oh, very well. Try not to make a nuisance of yourself, boy, or she might send you home early."

"Severus!" Ella said reproachfully, but she saw the amused look that he shared with his son and the boy scampered off happily. "Must you really bring your work home with you?" she said in mock annoyance. "Seffie and Celsus aren't your students, you know!"

"They will be, one day," Snape said, "And very soon, in Seffie's case. Besides, they know me well enough to see beyond any…sharpness of tone. Much as you do, love…"

He began to suck at the soft skin below Ella's ear and smirked as he felt her shiver in his arms. Eleven years of marriage and still he craved her taste. Now that the boy had gone to the Know-it-all's house and Seffie was in her room, no doubt engrossed in a book, he was assured at least an hour of time alone with his beloved wife before dinner.

"So…er…mm…oh, Severus, _stop_ it!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Seffie might – "

He interrupted, speaking rapidly and low. "Persephone will not emerge from her room until called. She has several books still to read from the latest consignment from Flourish and Blotts. I have never known such an avid reader."

Ella's robe was now off one shoulder and her head fell back, eyes closed, as he pressed her lower back and pulled her closer, trailing kisses along every inch of newly exposed flesh.

"So you see," he continued, "We might as well be all alone…"

Ella withdrew her wand from the folds of her robe and with a languid flick of her wrists cast Silencing and Warding charms on the kitchen before wrapping her arms around her husband's neck and her legs around his waist, making him chuckle in amusement as he shifted her on to the table.

Upstairs in her room, Persephone Snape lay on her bed with her chin propped in her hands and pored over the latest acquisitions for her personal library while she wondered when her Hogwarts letter would arrive. She supposed it would be on her birthday, and that was still almost three weeks away. She sighed. It couldn't come soon enough, as far as she was concerned. Miss Lovegood was nice enough but had some very strange ideas for a teacher, and the curriculum was not what she would call taxing. Her father told her as much on a regular basis and she had to agree. She was so looking forward to studying under him properly, and not just watching him in his own personal lab at home.

She liked Hogwarts very much. It was their second home, after all, and some of her earliest memories were of playing with her doll in the Silent Quadrangle while her mother rocked Celsus in his pram and her father told them all about his day. She had belonged there all her life, even though she had not lived within its walls since she was small. Soon she would be going there as a student and only coming home for the holidays, and for the odd weekend.

Weekends were a compromise she had had to make. Her mother had wanted her to attend school as a day student, coming home with her father each night. Persephone had objected most strongly and had needed to enlist the help of her father before Ella had seen sense. Even his notorious powers of persuasion had almost failed him when Mum's eyes had filled with tears, but eventually a compromise plan had been drawn and, on the whole, both parties were content.

Now all she had to do was wait for her Hogwarts letter and wonder which House she would be sorted to. Slytherin would please her father, she suspected; but at the same time, Ravenclaw would be equally acceptable, for it was her mother's house and it was nauseatingly obvious that his love for her transcended house rivalries. Her mother, on the other hand, would probably worry if she was sorted into Slytherin. The old prejudices were still hard to overcome, even if you were married to an honourable man. Too many other alumni of that house were dark wizards for Ella to feel happy about her daughter being counted among their number.

Persephone sighed and rolled over on to her back, staring at the centre ceiling rose and counting the small flowers that circled its perimeter. There were always thirty two. It was quite comforting to know that every time she returned home, there would still be thirty two flowers around her ceiling rose, her parents would still be embarrassingly affectionate and her little brother would still be a complete pain in the neck.

Her eyes narrowed. There were a few hexes she had learned and not yet had the chance to practice. All that would change, when she got her first wand. Celsus wouldn't be putting any more toads in her bed, she'd make sure he suffered the consequences if he did. She reached behind her head, felt for her book and began to read.

Hours later, Ella lay awake and listened to the sound of her husband's breathing while she watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. Normally a foolproof soporific, tonight it failed to soothe her and she ached to reach for him and lose herself in his strength.

Their love had never faltered, not once, in the years since their joining. Not even on the night of their wedding when she had channelled her love for him into an outburst of power that had banished the Dark Mark from his flesh forever and so stripped from him a part of himself. Oh, it had been a part of him that he had yearned to shed, it was true, but even so he had felt the loss keenly. It had been as if every facet of his psyche had turned on that one small part, and when it was gone he was unbalanced and unsure. The first few days after their wedding had been spent comforting him, listening to him, even drying his tears of joy. Afterwards, when he had confessed to her that no-one had ever been allowed to see such vulnerability, himself included, she had vowed that no-one else ever would. She had been, and always would be, his rock, his safe haven. And he was, and always would be, hers.

She smiled to herself ruefully in the dark, and closed her eyes. He would miss Seffie more than he knew once she was at Hogwarts.

At last the day of Persephone's eleventh birthday dawned. Ella had spent the previous day whispering and plotting with Hermione, concealing Zonko's Singing Streamers and Everfloat balloons inside all available cupboards and making sure that Celsus refrained from peeking inside the carefully wrapped gifts she and Severus had chosen over the preceding weeks. Now, as she lay awake with her still-sleeping husband at her side and with no more left to do save to enjoy the day, she remembered circumstances of her daughter's birth.

She had gone into labour knowing neither where her beloved was, nor whether he would be able to return to her side to see his daughter born. She had been terrified, exhilarated, worried and excited all at the same time, and when he had appeared in the delivery room her heart had almost burst. He had stayed with her then and never left her side until their baby had been born.

She shifted on to her side, the better to watch him sleep. His face was unlined in repose, the deep crease between his brows almost ironed out, the wrinkles around his eyes, deeper with each passing year, mere feather light strokes on the canvas of his face. His hair had begun to grey at the temples, concealed from general view by the curtain of hair that habitually covered half his face. A secret known only to her, she thought, and one of many they shared.

As if roused into wakefulness by her scrutiny, his eyes snapped open and he turned his head, frown lines deepening in a silent demand for an explanation.

"What?" he said, after her unwavering gaze had held his for long moments. Ella smiled, and reached out to caress his cheek.

"It's our daughter's birthday today," she announced.

"As if I could forget," he countered. "I suspected my bureau of housing a boggart the other day, and wondered why my deepest fear was manifesting itself as a length of foil singing 'Happy Birthday Little Witch."

"Oh, that! You can blame Celsus for that, he insisted we surprise her with a selection of Zonko's finest party decorations!"

"Well, I have found over the years that I can blame Celsus for many minor misdemeanours. I hesitate to say it, but I almost hope he is not sorted into Slytherin, when his time comes. My duties as his Head of House would surely conflict with my role as a loving father!"

Ella laughed and hugged him, burying her face in his chest as he embraced her. "Speaking of Sorting," she said in a muffled voice, "Seffie's letter should come today."

"Indeed. We should rouse her, shouldn't we? In fact, I am quite surprised she hasn't graced us with her presence before now.

"She's growing up, love. She'd like us to think that she's far too mature to wake us at the crack of dawn so that she can open her presents."

"Perhaps so…but Celsus isn't, where's he? And don't tell me he's sleeping the sleep of the innocent because I know that's inherently improbable!"

Ella lifted her head and propped herself up on one elbow. "Hmm. I hope he isn't setting any more traps for her. He wouldn't, would he? Not after last year!"

"One would hope not…Come on. We'd better get up."

Ella knocked on her daughter's bedroom door and, hearing nothing, went inside. What she saw there froze her to the spot, horror seizing her cries and trapping them in the constriction of her throat.

Celsus stood in the middle of the room, white as death with tears running down his cheeks, frightened eyes searching hers and pleading with her to understand.

"It wasn't me, Mummy, it was a bad man! A bad man came and he took her away, and I was only hiding, that's all, only to surprise her! It wasn't me, Mummy, it was the bad man, he did it!"

The window was open, the shutters flapping and banging in the wind. Persephone's bed was empty. She was gone.

"Where is she? What happened?" Snape's voice was rasped with fear and the boy turned to run to him, shuddering in arms that held him fiercely before strong hands gripped his shoulders and pushed him away a little. "Celsus, tell me. Tell me everything you saw."

Celsus looked into Snape's eyes, the father now hunkered down to the son's height, and allowed him into his mind before swooning dead away.

Scooping the insensate boy up in his arms, Snape turned to Ella, ashen-faced.

"Death eaters!" he said incredulously.


	2. A Dead Place

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks to everyone who left a review for my opening chapter. It's nice to know I was missed! Thanks especially to those of you who left some constructive criticism, which is always appreciated. The matter of backstory is quite a subjective one, I think; some people like it, others don't feel it is necessary. I am writing this story as a sequel to previous ones so I am assuming, rightly or wrongly, that readers will be familiar with them. It works for me; I hope it works for you too.

Please note that the rating of this story is perhaps a little too high (although it does address psychological issues), but I wanted to err on the side of caution, as it is far from written yet and who knows how far I will want to take it? (Certainly not me!)

Lastly...please review! ;-)

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**Chapter 2**

_**A Dead Place**_

Within minutes, Albus Dumbledore had flooed to the Snape family home. Other members of the old Order of the Phoenix soon followed; Hermione and Remus, who had heard Ella's screams through the opened window before her husband had cradled her in his arms and held her fiercely, muffling her cries in the soft wall of his chest; Tonks and Moody, disturbed from an early-morning meeting in Kingsley Shacklebolt's office; Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, who had been at the Burrow playing with Harry and Ginny's first-born, Lily.

Ella stood at the kitchen window, looking out towards the orchard but seeing only her daughter's face. Snape paced the length of the room, wheeling around as the aged Headmaster spoke.

"All we can do for the moment is wait, Severus. You know as well as I their preferred modus operandi."

"Wait? How can I _wait_? She is _my daughter_, Albus!" His voice cracked, and he turned away from the anxious faces, clenching his fists, face white with anger. "Why are they still at large, after all these years?"

There was a tapping at the window. A large tawny owl waited patiently to be allowed in. Ella had not even noticed its approach and Snape almost had to push her out of the way in order to reach over and unfasten the latch.

The owl deposited a vellum envelope on the kitchen table, in Persephone's habitual place. It hooted softly, looked at the assembled men and women with head cocked, then flew back out through the window. The letter bore an unmistakeable seal.

"It's her Hogwarts letter!" Hermione said. "She was – she was waiting for it. But – why would the owl bring it here, when Seffie isn't at home..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. Snape ran a hand through his hair, while Ella appeared to have noticed nothing of the owl or its delivery.

Hours passed and there was no word. Hermione had drawn Ella from the window and now she sat in one of the leather wing chairs that faced the fire, unseeing eyes looking into its flames. Snape watched her as he paced, unwilling to force her back from whatever reverie held her in its thrall in case she went to pieces in front of him; for he knew that he would be unable to offer the comfort she needed. He knew only too well the depravities the Death Eaters of old would have enjoyed. He saw no reason to suspect that ten years without their leader would have dampened their enthusiasm for torture and mutilation.

He felt sick to his stomach and, worse, he felt helpless. The Aurors had flooed back to the Ministry once they had gleaned all the information that they could from the Legilimency Snape had performed on Celsus. Potter and Weasley had returned to the Burrow to gather their families around them before awaiting instructions from Shacklebolt. Hermione and Remus were with the boy now, in the next room, leaving the Snapes alone with Albus Dumbledore.

"Severus, we must be of good faith! Persephone will be returned to you both momentarily, of that I am quite certain!"

"Meaningless platitudes, Albus, and unworthy of you! You know as well as I do that death could well be a blessed relief for her, after they have done their worst!"

"My boy, a little circumspection, if you will!" the Headmaster frowned, nodding towards Ella whose eyes were brimming with unshed tears. At once, Snape crossed to her side and dropped to his knees, taking trembling hands in his.

"I am sorry, love!" he murmured earnestly, searching her face for any sign that his words reached her. "I swear to you, I will bring her back to us!"

A single tear escaped the confines of her luminous green eyes and fell from her cheek on to his hand. It was almost his undoing, but instead of letting himself bury his head in her lap to muffle the cry of anguish that threatened to scour his throat, he stood abruptly and seized the pewter pot of Floo powder that sat on the mantelpiece. Throwing a pinch into the dancing flames he said, "Kingsley Shacklebolt!" and waited to learn what intelligence the senior Auror had been able to learn.

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Days later, the only contact they had with Persephone's kidnappers was a small envelope containing a single lock of black hair. No message, no instructions, no information as to her safety, or otherwise.

Ella's reaction to the missive had been extreme and Snape had been forced to summon Madam Pomfrey to administer a Calming Draught; but at least it had galvanised her out of the stupor that had stifled her grief and made her little more than an automaton.

She began to fuss over Celsus, who became of necessity her entire focus, never allowing the boy from her sight and insisting on having him sleep in their bed each night. Snape was concerned at her behaviour but did not object. He had no need of sleep himself, or so he felt; and he dared not challenge her, however kind his intentions, for fear of upsetting the fragile balance of her mind. Furthermore, if he were brutally honest with himself, he needed what little strength she still had, for if there was nothing left with which to supplement his own then he would never make it through the ordeal.

As it was, they became more distant with each passing day. Ella did not turn to her husband because she could focus on nothing except for the daughter that was lost and the son that would only be safe if she supervised his every movement. Her husband was a tenebrous presence always in the periphery of her vision; a distant memory of warmth, of passion, of comfort. Of happiness. None of that was needed or even relevant now. Her perception had shrunk and now encompassed only her children. Other people were just distractions, irritations to be shrugged off as best she could.

As for Snape, the equilibrium that had settled him in to an undreamed-of family life, a decade filled to overflowing with an emotion he had lacked for all of his life until Ella, had been snatched from him with a suddenness that dizzied him and threw him into turmoil. He hardly knew which way to turn. He needed to act, but still had no clue where to start the search. He could not sleep and he could not rest, and Ella offered no solace.

Then one afternoon, five long days after her abduction, an owl delivered Persephone's Weird Sisters nightshirt.

Snape could take no more. Howling with frustration he fled the house for the orchard, striding blindly through the trees until he had reached the farthest end, where he leaned against the trunk of an apple tree and beat his fist against it until the bark was streaked with red.

That night Ella settled Celsus into his own bed. "Sleep tight, my sweet baby," she whispered, brushing her lips across his forehead.

"Not a baby, Mum!" he objected sleepily. "I'm nearly ten!"

"You'll always be my baby, no matter how big you grow," she said, stifling a sob as she felt a stabbing pain in her heart with the knowledge that her first born might never reach adulthood.

She crossed to the casement window and checked all the locks and reset the wards, strengthening them and adding some alarms of her own. Pensive, she cast her eyes over the room and steeled herself to leave her son on his own in the room. The room was as secure as she and Severus could make it, the house was protected by even more wards, and there were aurors stationed throughout Hogsmeade. The only place safer would be Hogwarts itself, and she refused to move there, for she clung to the faint hope that if Persephone was returned she needed to be there for her.

Sighing as she drew the door to, she turned to the staircase and descended, deep in thought. Snape sat in their small library, nursing a large goblet of firewhisky. He lifted his head briefly as he heard her enter and then returned to his silent contemplation of the fire's dying embers. For the first time since her daughter's abduction, Ella's heart went out to him,

"Celsus is sleeping," she began softly, crossing to her husband's side and placing her hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension knotted there. "He wanted his own bed, and I decided there wouldn't be any harm...I mean, the wards we've both set, and the aurors...I'm trying to convince myself, anyway..." she trailed off.

Snape lifted his head once more, looking up at her with eyes filled with black, fathomless anguish. His suffering was as great as hers and she chastised herself for refusing to accept it before. She should not have needed the evidence of his bloodied hands and ragged cries; she should not have needed to be pierced by his gaze, a gaze that held no reproach but filled her with guilt just the same. Persephone was his daughter just as much as hers, a fact that she had selfishly forgotten.

"Severus, I'm sorry...I've been so wrapped up in my – "She broke off as he brushed aside her hand and jerked to his feet, running his hand through lank black hair before composing himself, straightening and then turning to her.

"Think nothing of it," he said stiffly, his face set into impassivity. Ella's brow furrowed. Over the years she had seen that expression on his face only twice before. Once was when informed that his brother had gone missing while hiking in the Himalayas with Tonks (the couple had discovered a hidden village and had decided to commune with its inhabitants for a few weeks in a quest for understanding of Muggle spirituality). The other time had been when Ella had suffered from a recurrence of her depression a few months after Celsus' birth and had slowly begun to shut everybody out, even her husband and daughter. She sensed that he was withdrawing into himself now, shielding his feelings under a protective carapace, and she knew better than to reach out to him and force him to admit his vulnerability. So, she dropped her eyes and turned away, trailing her hand along the mantle as she walked into the shadowed part of the room, missing the flame of despair flash across his face and the clenched fists that half hid in his robes.

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She did not know where she was, but she knew exactly where she wasn't. Persephone Snape had always prided herself on her analytical ability and she had spent the hours, or days, or weeks, since her incarceration wondering about the nature of the strange prison whose endless barren space confined her more effectively than any cell in the notorious Azkaban prison.

She wasn't in her world any more, she was quite certain about that. She was still undecided as to whether or not she was dead and this was the afterlife, but she tended to believe that she was, in fact, as alive as she had ever been, otherwise the horrid, shabby little man with the silver finger would not be able to threaten her dismemberment with such conviction.

How she hated him. She hated the way he scurried about, rat-like, from rock to rock and bush to bush, bringing her gruel in tin bowls and chipped mugs of brackish water. She hated the whine of his voice and the wheedle of his persuasion as he questioned her about her parents. About her father, in particular.

Most of all, she hated the fact that he had ruined her birthday. She should have been opening her long-awaited Hogwarts letter, travelling to Diagon Alley for her very own wand, buying even more books from her favourite shop, Flourish and Blotts. Instead she was sitting somewhere that wasn't even a real place, on a rock that had no hardness, hands pulling compulsively at grass that had no texture and no scent, glaring at a sky that held grey brightness but neither sun nor cloud. A nowhere place, a place with no night and no day. A place out of time whose horizon was frayed and appeared to be decaying.

Entropy. That's what it must be. The whole plateau was disappearing before her eyes. The man felt it too, she could tell by the way he would cast fearful glances over his shoulder whenever he spoke to her, as if he expected the edge to crumble away and race towards him. She wished it would. She willed the nothingness to creep up on him, for the ground to disappear beneath his feet and send him tumbling into the void, his short little legs pedalling on the spot before he fell.

On the other hand, what would happen to her when her prison faded away?

She slept. Perhaps when she awoke she would be dead. Perhaps that was the best –the only- thing she could do.

"Wake up! Wake up, girl! I need something from you, sit up! Sit up!"

Persephone struggled towards wakefulness, ready to lash out at her brother for disturbing her sleep before remembering where she was and to whom the reedy voice belonged.

"What is it?" she muttered angrily.

"_What is it, Mr Pettigrew_, you mean!" her captor corrected. Persephone glared at him. "Give me your arm," he continued, grabbing her by the wrist, the silver of his little finger cold and smooth on her pulse. It felt greasy and a wave of nausea swept through her as she realised that in his other hand he held his wand. "Exsanguino!" he pronounced excitedly, and blood welled from a thin cut that appeared just below her elbow.

"Ow! Get off me!" she yelled, twisting under his grip but unable to break his hold. "What are you doing?"

"Righting a wrong!" he replied maniacally. "Virgin's blood from a joining blessed by unicorns, almost as good as unicorn's blood itself, when combined with the right spells, and the will to cast them, oh yes, yes!"

"What are you talking about?" she said angrily, shrinking from him as she saw the gleam in his eyes.

"My Master wanted you for his own, and once you and I have brought him back, he shall have you!"

"If you mean who I think you mean, he's dead! Uncle Harry killed him years ago!"

"But what is death, to one as powerful as he? Merely the absence of life, do you see?" he answered earnestly, producing a small beaker from his pocket and pressing it to the underside of her arm so that her blood flowed freely into it. "But _here_ is life!"

Persephone shivered. "Leave me alone! Why are you doing this to me? Why _me_?"

Pettigrew sat back on his heels and drew a grubby handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket, wiping the rim of the beaker and casting a Sealing spell on her arm to staunch the flow of blood. It tingled painfully and she winced.

"Why you, Miss Snape? Why you, indeed! The daughter of a half-blood and a foul traitor? Has your mother never told you of your destiny? Of the time she spent in this place, with my Master? Of their conversation shortly after your birth, when my Lord claimed you for his own?"

Persephone shook her head vehemently. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

"You belong to my Master, girl! He will take you as payment for your father's transgressions! You will take the Dark Mark and you will be his, and Snape will know the ultimate betrayal when you stand at his side and crow at your good fortune!"

"And where will _you_ be?" challenged Persephone, desperation clawing at her heart as she cast about trying to deflect Pettigrew's growing enthusiasm. "Surely he wouldn't need you any more, if he had a – a consort?"

Beady eyes watered a little, and Pettigrew used the hairy back of his hand to wipe them away. "My master appreciates my loyalty. He wouldn't send me away. I live to serve him."

Persephone watched as he circled his wand over the beaker. An opaque seal formed over it and once he was satisfied that its contents were safe and none of the precious blood would spill from it, he scrambled to his feet and scurried away, muttering excitedly to himself. Persephone buried her face in her hands and took deep breaths. She had a sneaking suspicion that things were taking a turn for the worse.


	3. An Old Friend

**Chapter 3**

_**An Old Friend**_

Watery grey dawn hesitated at the windows, reaching weak fingers of light into the room to caress the soft monochrome shadows that surrounded the bed. Ella stared at the sleeping form of her son, a shapeless mound of blankets in the middle of the bed, shifting slightly with each steady breath.

So. Another night had passed and Celsus was safe, and Persephone was still gone.

Ella unfolded her protesting limbs, rubbing the back of her neck, her arms aching and her toes tingling. Sudden cramp in her calf set her teeth on edge and she swung her legs over the side of the bed, stretching and flexing and trying to ease the pain without disturbing her son.

She had tried to stay away, to trust in his safety and remain in her own bed, but her resolve had wavered as the shadows had lengthened and the new moon had offered no solace. Her husband had not come to bed and she knew in her heart that comfort would neither have been sought nor offered, had he done so. She had crept into Celsus' room, her heart pounding with dread only to skip a beat upon seeing his small frame spread-eagled across the bed, and she had climbed on to its foot, curling her knees up to her chest and hugging herself, eyes wide open and fearful of losing sight of him.

Her head thick and aching, she stole out without disturbing him and went to perform her morning ablutions before facing another empty, endless day.

The note was waiting for her on the kitchen table, its copperplate script as familiar to her as her own.

"_Ella_."

She unfolded the thick parchment and sank into a chair, her eyes filling with tears.

"_I can wait no longer. I am going to Azkaban to interrogate Skeeter and Malfoy myself. Look after our son, and take heart. I will not return alone. Severus._"

No, she could not sit idly by and allow him to go to that place alone. He was the proudest, strongest man she knew, but she had talked long with Sirius about Azkaban and she knew that a man like Snape, who guarded jealously the cornerstones of his life and kept them hidden from view, would crumble when exposed to the wraithlike insistency of the Dementors. They would leech every happy memory from him and would feast on his self-loathing and secret neuroses until he was driven mad and shrunken into a desperate shadow of himself. Without Ella there to offer her unconditional love, he would not have the ability to protect himself; nor would he maintain any sort of equilibrium when interviewing his old foes.

Ella was his rock, and he was hers. They needs must be together, and therefore, she realised, she would have to entrust Celsus into the care of someone else for a short while.

The prospect filled her with dread. Ella considered herself to be, on the whole, a contented person. She had married the love of her life and they shared two delightful children (her heart wept as she wondered where her daughter was and how she fared). However, she knew very well that her contentment relied a great deal on her feeling completely in control of her life.

Sometimes she questioned her lot in life. She had spent so many years running from her past, and then even when she had met Severus she had done her level best to drive him away, to deny herself a chance at happiness. Only after her sojourn at Beauxbatons Academy and a great deal of support from Sirius Black had she found the strength to surrender herself to her love; and only with her insistence had Severus been persuaded likewise.

Even then, she had on occasion found herself trying to drive him away. Several months after the birth of their son she had felt herself close off from everything and everybody save for the tiny new life whose face was uncannily like her own and whose cries could be turned to laughter by no-one but her. She had insisted that no-one could possibly care for him as well as she could, and from that viewpoint it was but a small step to believe with all her heart that it would be nothing short of disastrous if anyone else were even to try.

Ella had managed to convince herself that if Celsus was so much as taken for a walk by his 'Aunt Hermione', he would suffer some serious accident and die. If his own father, her beloved husband, was left in the house while Ella walked with Persephone into Hogsmeade, then the house would surely be nothing more than a charred pile of rubble upon her return, the corpses of her husband and her son buried within.

Severus had found her impossible to deal with, although he could understand what twisted motivations drove her psyche; for wasn't she, in her own way, as damaged as he? Only the conviction that they were each other's life's mate spurred him to cleave to her side rather than allow her to distance herself from him.

Despite his silent, unswerving support, or perhaps because of it, her morbid ideas had gathered apace over the months until irrational fear had encompassed every part of her family life. Soon, her husband could not even sit in his armchair late into the night without her convincing herself that he had died there and was stiffening silently beside the dying embers of the fire. Raw terror would suffocate her in its grip and she would lie in the marital bed not daring to breathe, listening for a cough or a creak, some sign that he lived still, too paralysed with fear to leave the claustrophobia of the bed and descend to the library in search of reassurance.

All she needed to do to avert these disasters was be there. Simply the fact of her presence would be enough to ensure that nothing would happen to her family. She gathered them close around her and kept them there, and all was well.

As the years passed and she recovered herself, she forgot about the night sweats and the racing pulses, the anxiousness and the bitten fingernails, particularly after Voldemort's fall had faded from her mind. However, Persephone's abduction had brought all of her old neuroses back to the forefront now, and she could not bear the idea that she could not both supervise Celsus and be at her husband's side.

Snape drew his travelling cloak tightly around him, as if by so doing he could keep out the chill of despair that clutched icy fingers around his soul as the guards of Azkaban floated to greet him. Brandishing his wand he cried "Expecto Patronum!" and with a blinding flash of light they were repulsed, circling high over his head now and safeguarding him from their reach.

Setting his face into a deep frown of concentration he advanced through the huge stone doors of the ancient fortress, holding his wand aloft in order to supplement the inadequate light of the new moon.

Only since the birth of his daughter had he been able to conjure an effective Patronus. Charms had never been his strongest suit, but he prided himself on a certain efficiency in the field, albeit lacking the flair of, say, Filius Flitwick or even (he hated to admit it) Hermione Granger Lupin. Still, the Patronus Charm had always been beyond his capability until Ella had shown him how to be happy.

Ah, Ella. She would have found his note by now and no doubt would be angry. Still, there had been little else he could do. He was not a man to prevaricate, to wait around for Aurors to do what was ultimately no-one's duty but his. Persephone was his daughter and he would find her.

He had to. The consequences were unthinkable, otherwise.

He crossed the courtyard, the echoing sound of his footsteps deadened by the oppressive prison walls. The Ministry would not sanction his visit, and he knew better than to expect such, but Order members had eased his passage by lifting the security wards so that he was allowed to Apparate directly to the island and supplying the locations of the cells he intended to visit. Now he was on his own with only his Patronus, and his ability to create it, as protection.

His footfalls were deafening in the otherwise preternatural silence of the damp, stone-hewn corridors. He slowed his pace almost unconsciously, wanting to put off the encounter that might help him find his daughter but that would certainly disturb his sense of self. Lucius Malfoy, still the snake in Snape's Eden even after all those years, snatching a relatively normal life from a lonely teenaged boy all those years ago and depriving him of his paradise now. His brows drew together and he almost snarled in self-disgust. Malfoy was no snake, he was a lowly worm and a decade in Azkaban would doubtless expose him as such now.

Thusly steeling himself, Snape took a narrow secondary corridor, following its downward-sloping twists and turns until he reached a set of iron bars, thinly spaced.

A voice, rusty from lack of use, carried mockingly from the shadows.

"Ah, Severus, how delightful! But really, old friend, bad form! Had I known to expect a visitor, I could have made a little effort with the old place!"

Lucius Malfoy emerged from a dark corner, waving his hand in a self-deprecating fashion, a small moue of disappointment expressing faux embarrassment at his surroundings. Even after ten years of deprivation, he still exuded an air of arrogance.

His once handsome face was lined and greyish but still wore an expression of hauteur, and his hair was lank and thin, yet it still cascaded down his back in a silver wave. He tilted his chin arrogantly.

"Still the same Lucius, I see," Snape observed. Cold grey eyes looked him up and down appraisingly and Snape's flesh crawled as he felt the other man's quicksilver gaze.

"The years have been kind to you, hmm? And how is that little half-blood you married? Still a firebrand in the bedroom?" His mouth twisted into a mocking smile as he saw Snape bristle, and he approached the bars of his cell.

"How is my boy?" he asked conversationally. Snape's eyes narrowed. Malfoy had shown callous disregard for his son's welfare eleven years before and now, as a father himself, he was disturbed by the lack of any genuine concern in his adversary's eyes.

"As well as can be expected," he answered brusquely. "He is living at Hogwarts now."

"Indeed. Narcissa was so hurt that he preferred to make his home there instead of taking his rightful place at Malfoy Manor."

Snape did not comment. Draco had spent two years in St Mungo's after his father's arrest while the doctors tried to piece together the jigsaw shards of his mind, ruined by a combination of Imperio and Cruciatus. And probably, Snape thought angrily, a lifetime of psychological abuse.

"I need information," he said baldly. "I need to know what Death Eater cells are still active, and where I can find them."

"Hah!" Malfoy laughed, incredulity bringing on a fit of rasping coughing. "You and the Ministry, both! What on earth makes you think I am party to such information? I have been, shall we say, a little _out of the loop_ these last years; this cell is a little too cramped for a soiree, don't you agree, _old friend_?"

"Narcissa visits you."

"Twice a year, yes...you can imagine, we spend all our allotted time discussing strategy," he drawled sarcastically. "Tsk, tsk, really now Severus! Even a man of limited sensibilities such as yourself can surely imagine a better use of our time! Or does _your_ wife spurn your fumbling advances now that she has no need of your protection?"

Snape's flexing fingers curled into fists and he struggled not to react to Malfoy's calculating provocation.

"I am sure Narcissa finds a way to pass on information to you," he persisted.

"Then why not ask her? Oh...oh, I see, you already have...did my pretty little songbird keep silent? How loyal she is to her poor, unfortunate husband!"

"Aurors have administered Veritaserum. She knows nothing of any relevance, as you must well know, Lucius!" Snape growled. "As for loyalty, she is a typical Black, interested in saving her own neck rather than put it on the line for anyone else, even you!"

Malfoy sneered unpleasantly but Snape continued before he could comment.

"Any information she might have passed on to you would have been without her knowledge. An innocuous message from a family friend could contain any number of coded meanings."

"Meanings referring to what, Severus? What has happened that is so grave it brings you all the way to Azkaban and makes you forget all the usual social niceties, such as a bottle of firewhisky for your gracious host?"

Steeling himself, Snape gave Malfoy the crumb of information for which he had been scrabbling.

"Persephone has been abducted by Death Eaters."

Malfoy took a small step backwards and huffed in surprise.

"Well! How breathtakingly audacious! How very precious!" And then he laughed, loud and long. It took all of the self-control Snape could muster to leave his wand up his sleeve and not hex the blond wizard into smithereens. When Malfoy finally stopped, Snape had the taste of copper in his mouth. He had been biting his lip, and he ran his tongue over the swelling. Malfoy noticed, of course, and raised his eyebrows mockingly, knowing he had needled the other man.

Snape spoke through gritted teeth. "What do you know about it, Malfoy?"

Malfoy dropped his chin to his chest and shook his head, turning away and walking slowly to the other end of his cell. Snape heard a low, sardonic chuckle and braced himself to hear the worst.

"Little Seffie Snape, taken away by the bad man? Ah, how her halfblood mother must be wringing her hands! And you, Severus, beaten down at every turn for years...a return to type for you, eh? Tell me, what is it like to imagine all our old tricks being employed against your own daughter? Does it thrill you? Oh – secretly, of course, for propriety's sake – but does it? Hmm?"

Snape's fingernails were digging so sharply into his palms that they pierced the tender skin there, but he embraced the pain. If he gave in to the almost irresistible urge to kill Malfoy now, the Dementors would swoop down and feast on his soul and he could not afford to leave the search for Persephone to others whose devotion to her fell far short of his. Malfoy's eyes were coldly appraising as they calculated the sum of the effects of his words on his erstwhile friend and protégé.

"Tell me where she is, Lucius."

"I don't know!"

"You must have some idea!"

"Should I? And ought I to tell if I had, for old times' sake? Ah, Severus, I'd sooner kill you...if I but had the means!" His voice dropped almost to a whisper, filled with venom. Snape ran a hand through his hair and turned to leave. Any further pleas would be demeaning and ultimately fruitless.

Malfoy knew nothing; Snape had heard the avidity in his voice, a sick interest that Lucius had never been able to conceal when fed a morsel of someone else's suffering. He would make an excellent Dementor, Snape mused, wondering how those fiends selected candidates suitable to swell their ranks. Perhaps Malfoy would one day be able to fulfil his most base desires by sucking the life from the wretches of Azkaban. At least they probably deserved it, unlike the miserable Muggles he had been so fond of torturing. Sickened, he did his best to ignore the low, manic chuckle that mocked him as he ascended the dark, dank corridor once more.

A familiar silhouette was outlined against the stormy night sky as he neared the end of the main corridor and the courtyard beyond. His heart lurched and his step faltered.

"What are you doing here?" he croaked, the sight of her enough to tear down the defences he had strived so long to maintain.

"I couldn't let you do this alone, Severus," Ella replied softly, clutching her cloak around her and casting fearful glances up into the sky where the wraithlike Dementors silently circled.

They embraced and he felt his wife tremble in his arms as she tried to give him comfort. She was terrified and her worry and pain were palpable, and yet as he held her to him he could feel her determination wash over him like a wave. She pushed herself away from him firmly, still holding him around the waist, and looked into his eyes. He entered her mind gently and was overwhelmed with sorrow and concern and love.

"Ella, I – "

"It's alright," she said. "I need to be here. I need to be with you."

"And...and I you," he answered simply.


	4. A Breakthrough

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**

Thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far. The last chapter was a little intense, and in case you're wondering, Ella's neuroses are all too authentic. Yes, I admit to a degree of 'author insertion' in this story!

The angst won't let up just yet, I'm afraid...

**Chapter 4**

_**A Breakthrough**_

There was a small room at one corner of the courtyard that Ella supposed had been a guards' shelter at one time. She shivered and looked up at the weeping sky, where several Dementors had turned their featureless faces towards them.

"Come on in here for a moment," she urged.

She led her husband across to the entrance. There was no door, but at least the room afforded some small shelter from the rain and a modicum of relief from the guards' incessant, draining watchfulness.

"Where is Celsus?" Snape demanded.

"With Albus. I couldn't bring myself to leave him at home. It – well, somehow it didn't feel right, knowing that he was there and I wasn't. I thought he'd be safer at Hogwarts."

Snape nodded. "Hmm. And are you alright?"

"I am now," she said, reaching out to her husband and laying her hand on his chest. He covered it with his and she swallowed hard, aching for news of their firstborn.

"What did Malfoy tell you?"

He scowled. "He told me nothing that I didn't expect. I don't believe he knows anything at all. He is quite mad, of course."

"Ten years' subjection to the avidity of the Dementors will do that, I should think," shuddered Ella.

"No, he has always been like that," Snape mused. "The difference is that he used to conceal it more effectively."

"And what about Rita Skeeter?"

"I haven't seen her yet."

"I'll come with you, then," Ella said decisively.

"Very well. She's up there," he replied. Ella's gaze followed where he pointed and she reached within his voluminous travelling cloak to grasp his hand.

Rita Skeeter had been housed at the top of one of the highest towers of Azkaban prison, a jagged grey finger accusing the sky. Ella wondered at the reasoning behind the allocation of cells. Lucius Malfoy languished in a deep, dark dungeon while the scheming, evil harridan Rita Skeeter, nevertheless surely less culpable than the Machiavellian Malfoy, seemed to have been afforded the luxury of a view.

Only upon reaching the lofty cell after climbing what seemed to be an interminable spiral staircase did Ella began to understand the particular cruelty of the incarceration. The tower was windowless for most of its ascent save for slender arrow-slits that barely illuminated the musty staircase, apart from at the top. There, windows were on all sides. The monolith could have been a lighthouse were it not for the dearth of light therein. Rita's cell was a room with windows for walls and for her there was no escape from the sight of the Dementors circling outside, relentlessly watching, skittering fleshless fingers across the rattling windowpanes.

It was apparent that even a Death Eater and convicted murderer could, with sufficient funds and influence, buy what passed for a comfortable imprisonment; for Lucius Malfoy definitely had the superior accommodation.

The reporter was huddled on the floor in the centre of the room, her arms in a defensive position over her head, shielding herself from the menace beyond the glass walls of her cell. Darkness had fallen quickly and all that Ella could see were grey clouds roiling into black. She could still hear the Dementors, though, and feel their attention; a tapping of bone on glass that made her stomach churn in an unconscious echo of the storm gathering outside.

She heard a rustle of parchment in the corner and saw Rita Skeeter's old Quick Quotes Quill busily scratching away, preparing to document the conversation that was to follow.

The woman flinched as Snape said her name coldly, drawing her arms around her knees and rocking herself. He repeated,

"Rita Skeeter, show yourself! Or would you prefer that I open a window latch?"

Skeeter started, and blinked at Ella and Snape through mother-of-pearl framed spectacles.

"Snape. Why are you here?" she asked tremulously. Have you come to take me away?"

Snape snorted. "I have come for information," he replied shortly, squeezing Ella's hand behind his back before taking two deliberate steps towards his quarry. She scrabbled backwards before casting a terror-filled glance over her shoulder to the window behind her, and stopped in her tracks, unwilling to leave the centre of the room.

"They don't tell me anything, you know!" she began. "But they're always there, always! I can't sleep, I can't rest – they bring me food but they never come in, they don't need to...they never leave me!"

Ella looked down at the wretch before her. She supposed she ought to pity her but she could not. Here was the woman who had abducted her, demeaned and derided her, followed the Dark Lord and betrayed everyone with whom she had ever come into contact, quite apart from the scurrilous gossip-mongering of her journalism. Ella turned away contemptuously, preferring to examine the constant rolling and unrolling of the sheaves of parchment that littered the floor and the somewhat threadbare appearance of the ten-year-old quill. She turned her head this way and that, reading odd snatches of florid reportage.

"_Intrepid journalist Rita Skeeter enjoyed a private interview with the saturnine Severus Snape this evening_..." and "_Dilettante Ella Redemte Snape arrived at Azkaban Prison..._"

Ella rolled her eyes and turned back to her husband. He had leant over Skeeter placing his hands on his knees as he stared into her eyes.

"Tell me all you know about my daughter's abduction."

Rita shrieked a high, shrill laugh. "I can't get out, you know! And no-one comes to visit, you're the first people I've seen in months!"

The quick Quotes Quill scratched away furiously.

"Legilimens," Snape said softly, and a prickle of fear sent gooseflesh racing along Ella's spine. He was predatory and terrifying in his intensity, pinning the ruined woman before him like a bug on a specimen board.

He had never experienced a mind like it; then again, he had never before delved into the psyche of one touched by Dementors. It was still Skeeter, of course, and unmistakeably so; flashes of lurid colour, leopard skin undergarments and sycophantic conversations dripping with acid observations all confirmed her identity far beyond any shadow of doubt. In between the memories and experiences, however, was blackness, huge ragged patches of nothingness. A soul-leeching _néant_ that threatened to pull his questing mind down a deepening spiral into itself, never to emerge.

He pulled back, unnerved. Skeeter's eyes were glassy and she did not move. Any skill she might once have possessed in the art of Occlumency had evidently been lost long since. He flexed his fingers, a nervous habit, and looked across at his wife, seeing their daughter's eyes stare back at him. Steeling himself, he plunged back into the eerie patchwork of Rita Skeeter's mind.

Easing through her memories, he saw much that he would have preferred not to know. Ignorance could, indeed, be comparative bliss. He saw the Daily Prophet offices, the Ministry of Magic, scurrilous headlines, lives ruined. He saw Madam Malkin's finest couture cast aside in favour of animal prints and stretchy, glittering confections in garish colours. He saw misery, outrage and violence and felt the woman's perverse delight in them all.

He saw Ella, his wife, his beloved, in an unnaturally darkened alleyway being sucked into an old-fashioned tapestry carpetbag. He felt Skeeter's glee as she snapped the clasp, felt her surge of hatred as Ella was pulled backwards into herself, unharmed. He saw Dementors circling the windows of her cell, ten or more of them pressing up against the glass, rattling the panes and lifting the latches, reaching fleshless fingers towards her and caressing her cheek, prying open her jaw –

Again he pulled back, taking several steps back towards the door, wanting to turn and flee. He put a hand on either side of the stone frame, leaning forward with his head bent, lank black locks curtaining the horror writ on his face.

_Persephone_. He had to find her. Ella and Celsus depended on him. His sanity depended on it. Steadying his resolve once more, he plunged back in, ignoring the silent siren call of the empty spaces that beckoned to him. How easy it would be to succumb to the darkness, to lose himself in her mind, to take a few short steps over to one of the many windows, open the latch and offer himself to the circling Dementors, close his eyes and accept their lethal embrace...

There it was again; the carpetbag. Surely that was the key. He examined it closely; the bamboo rods that held the clasp, opening now; the yawning, gaping maw of the bag beckoning him, the long hinges at either end, their mechanism smooth and lethal.

There was the key.

The tapestry, all sage and beige and black, burnt umber and vermilion, flowers, birds and paisley swirls. A spell contained therein, an invocation that both made and destroyed itself, cyclical, first growth and then decay. An incantation to understand, to memorise, to recreate to save his daughter.

Probing the memory, he learned all he could and finally withdrew. Skeeter, her back arched as vestiges of her will struggled against his lengthy invasion, crumpled to the floor unheeded.

Snape turned to his wife. "I've learned all I can. Take me from this place before I decide I deserve to stay."

Ella nodded swiftly and took his arm, half pulling him don the narrow stairwell and back out into the courtyard before stopping to ask,

"Why, what do you mean? Why would you stay?"

His only response was a desperate, anguish-filled look.

"Severus, that was all _years_ ago! Why has it returned to haunt you _now_, of all times?"

"Because I escaped this!"

"By dint of your own good sense, yes! You changed, Severus! Years ago! Years before I even met you, over half a lifetime ago!"

Snape's shoulders sagged and he tried to turn away from her but Ella grabbed his arms angrily.

"Focus on the present and on our future, not the dim and distant past!"

"It's the Dementors, Ella! I can feel them reaching out to me. Skeeter's a mess, her memory is full of holes, and they live there, and they _felt_ me – they _know_ me, Ella, and they want to feast on my memories, on my misdeeds, my neuroses – I can't fight them!"

"Don't you think _I'm_ scared? Don't you think I feel them too? Severus, I'm _terrified!_ But we're doing this for our daughter and you have to tell me, you _have_ to – _can you find her_?"

He nodded. "Yes."

Ella sagged against the cold stone wall. "Then take me home."


	5. A Talent

**Chapter 5**

_**A Talent.**_

Persephone Snape sat on a rock and planned her escape. There was little else to do and she was of the opinion that it was better systematically to exhaust every avenue of possibility before admitting defeat. Unbeknownst to the odious Wormtail, she had mapped out the perimeter of the plateau and had made regular mental calculations as to its area and the rate of its decay. It was shrinking fast, and yet she was perturbed to find the number of boulders and small stunted shrubs remained constant. She wondered what would happen when the plateau became too small to support them all. It was a conundrum, and one on whose complexities she was loath to dwell. With any luck, she would have found a way to escape before it became an issue; or she would be rescued.

She felt her eyes begin to prickle as she thought of her father and she blinked furiously. She would not cry. She would not. He would expect her to be strong and rational, not to go to pieces. She would make him proud of her. She was sure that he was engineering her rescue at that very moment and she would need to be ready.

Thus encouraged, she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and set about plucking the short blades of ersatz grass that would serve as _aides memoire_ for the hexes she was trying to recall; one each for the Jellylegs and Leglocker curses, two for the slightly more serious Facsimilemortis, all the way through to six blades of grass to represent what was, in her opinion, the most difficult and potentially the most useful curse she knew, Petrificus Totalis.

She was under no illusion that any of them would actually work, although she intended to try some of the more straightforward ones. She had no wand, and so had never tried to practise them before. She had been waiting for her birthday, so eager to get her first wand that her mother had promised to take her to Diagon Alley on the morning of her birthday.

She had always found Ollivander's to be a fascinating shop, old and musty with shelves crammed with hundreds of boxes. Her mother had told her that Mr Ollivander knew where every single wand in his shop was kept, and, what was more, he remembered the core of every single wand he had ever sold and who owned it. Persephone was a little in awe of Mr Ollivander.

People could manage without a wand, according to her father, but usually only when in extremis. She snorted. She didn't think she could be _in_ any more _extremis_ if she tried, but it all appeared to hinge on one's state of mind at the time. She wondered whether or not the level of adrenaline in one's body enhanced magical ability by fuelling it with something more than the power of will. Just her luck to be the sort of girl who took most things in her stride.

All that she could do was try, though, she reasoned. She arched one eyebrow in thought, pursing her lips as she pondered which hex to practise first. It would have to be one that worked on a blade of grass or a small shrub, because there were no other test subjects available to her...unless...

Taking a deep breath, Persephone Snape stared fixedly at her knees, frowned hard and spoke the incantation for the Jellylegs jinx. Nothing happened. She tried again, making a small disgusted noise as her legs stubbornly refused to succumb to the hex.

"Oh, come _on_!" she growled. A third time, and she felt a muscle in her left leg begin to twitch. Unsure now as to whether or not her posture was to blame – her father was always telling her not to slouch – she tried again.

It worked! Both of her heels drummed on the ground and she felt a weakness in both limbs. Stifling the swell of euphoria that began to form in her chest, she repeated the spell. This time her legs shook and she was unable to bend her knees at will.

She waited apprehensively for the spell to wear off. Pettigrew might come back at any moment and it would not do to raise his suspicions. Not that he appeared to be particularly bright, although she knew appearances could be deceptive; wasn't her own father a prime example of that axiom? However, wandless magic from an eleven-year-old would be the very last thing he would suspect, she thought proudly.

It was best to practise this new-found skill a little more and perhaps try her hand at such distractions as the Twitchy-ears hex and Engorgio, before moving on to the ones that could directly aid her eventual escape, such as Accio and Portus.

It was a shame that she would be unable to practise the Confundus charm, or even Stupefy, but she had no test subject other than herself and it would be unwise to compromise herself. How she wished Celsus was with her, for her to practise on.

Still, it couldn't be helped. She had seen him in the corner of her bedroom as the men had come to take her away, his eyes wide as saucers and full of abject fear. Scared as she had been, she had resisted the urge to call out to him for fear of putting him at risk too. She had wondered, in the days that had followed, whether that had been brave of her or stupid, but she had eventually decided that she had acted out of self-interest, for, left behind, he would be able to raise the alarm. Her father would be proud of her Slytherin cunning.

Now, however, with loneliness threatening to overwhelm her and no guinea pig to practise her newfound skill on, she had concluded that she had simply been stupid.

Her stomach was rumbling again. She sighed and brushed the grass from her robes, settling down to wait for her next meal.

XXXXXX

The Ministry of Magic had offered its sincerest apologies, of course. Its officials had acted in the best interests of the wizarding world by ensuring that the carpet bag had been hidden in 'a very safe place', far away from prying eyes. That the security of this place had so easily been breached and the forgotten storeroom so comprehensively ransacked was beyond anyone's understanding, and they could not possibly have foreseen such a theft.

That was the official line.

Tonks' version, as she and Caius sat at Ella's kitchen table sipping from large mugs of scalding tea, was more prosaic.

"They ballsed it up," she said tiredly, running her hands through her shoulder-length orange hair. It had been that colour and style for days; Persephone's disappearance had sombred her and she had no interest in her usual distractions. "They put one junior secretary on security, which meant that all he had to do all day was just sit there with a signing-in book, and assumed that since no-one was supposed to know it was there, it was safe."

Snape glared at her. "Tell me, do all Ministry employees have to meet a certain level of incompetence to work there?" he asked sourly, "Or do they simply employ any halfwit they can find walking along the street and hope for the best?"

"I'm so very sorry, Severus," she replied. "I feel so responsible!"

"I am gratified to hear it!" came the acid reply.

"Sev!" Caius complained. "It's not her fault, she has absolutely nothing to do with it!"

"My point exactly!" he shouted, rising to his feet and splaying his fingers on the table as he loomed over her. "One would have hoped that she might have thought it _prudent_ to make sure that it _was_ something to do with her, given what she knew of it and its pivotal role in our lives!"

"No, Caius is right," said Ella dully. "We can't lay blame. How can we ever possibly second-guess the Fates? How can we know that what we do won't make things worse? Look at what happened to Sirius..."

"Bloody Sirius has nothing to do with it and so I'd appreciate your not talking about him," her husband snapped, striding out of the room. "I'm going to floo Shacklebolt and find out what is being done to sort out this mess."

XXXXXXX

An hour later, Snape and Ella said their goodbyes. Kingsley Shacklebolt had told him that the theft of the carpetbag had been carried out two days before Persephone's abduction and the Aurors were closing the net on a gang they thought consisted of three men, probably Death Eaters.

The trail had dried up for a time, but they had just received intelligence that a trio fitting the descriptions of the wanted men had been seen on the Cornish coast.

"Severus, I want to come with you!" Ella insisted.

"No. I want you to stay here with Celsus. He needs his mother."

"That isn't the reason, and you know it!"

He rounded on her abruptly, his eyes flashing with impatience. "And what of it? Is it so difficult for you to understand?"

Ella folded her arms but stood her ground, and he sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Ella, I have to know that you and Celsus are safe. I am finding my impotence regarding protecting Persephone hard enough to bear. I couldn't bear it if – well, I would prefer not to have you imperilled."

"But I can't let you go without me! What if – what if something happens to you?"

"I'll be careful. And besides, your presence is not a talisman that will protect me from all evil!"

"That's not fair!"

"I know, and I am sorry for it; but it is true nonetheless."

"I can't help it, Severus! I need to be there!"

"No. You need to be with our son, in case some catastrophe befalls _him_ that your mere presence could have averted!" he said dryly. "If only you could split yourself in two!"

Ella's eyes filled with angry tears and her hand came swiftly up to connect with his cheek in a stinging slap. "How _dare_ you! I thought you _understood_ me!"

"I try, Ella, I _really try_! But finding our daughter is a far more pressing problem than your neuroses. If you're so concerned about me, use the emerald. I assume it still functions adequately?"

Stung, Ella's hand went reflexively to her neck.

"It's on your nightstand," he said pointedly. "Gathering dust."

Turning on his heel, he strode over to the closet and took out his cloak, swinging it over his shoulders in one graceful movement. When he turned back to her, she was gone. Never the type of man to beg forgiveness, particularly when faced with irrational female intransigence, he muttered an imprecation half under his breath and swept from the house, striding quickly to the next house on the street where Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks awaited him.

Ella heard him leave, and hastened down the hall to the front door where she wrenched it open and almost called after him. Almost. She watched as he left her behind with never a backward glance, the wind blowing back his hair and catching his long cloak, alternately filling and whipping it in his wake. She thought that he might as well have been the man she had watched walk away from her all those years ago outside Hogwarts, when she had stood and laughed with Remus and Sirius and he had been a mystery to her, a riddle she felt compelled to solve.

XXXXXXXXX

"How could he just walk out, Hermione?" Ella asked as they sat sipping from mugs of hot chocolate. She had told her friend everything about their argument, and Hermione sat, bemused and in silence, considering how best to reply. Ella never usually discussed any details of her marriage with anyone apart from her husband, as the other interested party, and it was a measure of her frustration that she felt compelled to betray his wish for privacy and do so now.

"Perhaps he felt it best simply to leave, before you said things you'd regret?" Hermione ventured.

"Hah! Well, in that case he should have gone sooner!" Ella replied. "Oh, I don't know! I just want everything to be like it was before!"

"And it will be, when he brings Seffie home." Hermione reached across the table and put her hand over Ella's. "He will, you know. He's focussing on that, not on you. You should understand that, of all people!"

"I never thought I'd see the day that you defended him," Ella said ruefully.

"I always defended him to Harry and Ron!" she replied hotly.

"Oh, Hermione. I've really messed up, haven't I? I've neglected him through all of this! What sort of a wife am I?"

"Since when does following your husband to Azkaban count as neglect, Ella?" Hermione asked. "Honestly, you're starting to wallow in it. Stop it!"

Astonished, Ella sat back and stared. She began to speak, but thought better of it and stopped, frowning thoughtfully. Eventually she said,

"I can't help it, you know. Sometimes I just...I feel so sure I'm being reasonable and I can't understand why he doesn't agree. And other times...the good times, when I'm feeling alright...it just doesn't matter, because nothing matters when we're together. Nothing should matter, as long as we love one another." She sighed and ran her hands through her hair before touching the emerald she now wore once more. "I wish he hadn't gone before I could tell him."

"I'm sure he knows, Ella," Hermione said gently.

"I _miss_ her, Hermione! What if – what if he can't find her? Or – or what if he _does _find her and she's – she's – "

"He'll bring her back safe, Ella! He will! When has he ever let you down before?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The wind lashed them relentlessly as they stood on the wild Cornish headland. The salt spray stung their eyes and tightened their skin until their cheeks reddened. Tonks hugged herself and sunk as far as she could into the oversized khaki surplus jacket she wore, while Remus turned his back on the unseasonably cruel sea breeze, surveying the crags and scrub of the bluff. Only Snape seemed unmoved by the vagaries of the weather, standing a little way apart from the others, his gimlet eyes darting here and there. It was too much to hope that the gang had left a trail for them to follow; nevertheless, hope was all that he had to draw on. After all, failure would mean the loss of far more than his daughter although, the Fates knew, that was unthinkable enough. Failure would mean the loss of everything; his son, his wife, his life.

He knew, rationally, that Ella loved him as ardently as she ever had, as deeply as he did her. However, the years they had shared thus far had not been uniformly blissful. He had assumed, eleven years ago when the Dark Mark had been purged from his body by her wondrous magic and from his soul by her unconditional love, that he would exist, from thereon in, in some previously unimaginable state of wonderment that he had been thusly blessed.

And so it had seemed, for the first couple of years. They had lived in the lower reaches of the school, surrounded by all that was familiar and cherished, and he had been cocooned by her love and by the comfortable home she had created in his safe haven. And then Celsus had come along and they had decided to move to Hogsmeade, to larger accommodation close to Persephone's future nursery and infant school.

He sighed. They had been happy there, were happy there still; but in retrospect he could not help but think that uprooting at that time had been ill advised. Busy transferring his effects to their new house and setting up a second laboratory in the cellar, he had missed all the signs in Ella's demeanour that ought to have warned him she was descending once more into the malaise that had held her in its devastating grip during her first pregnancy.

By the time Celsus was four months old and all the curtains had been hung, by the time the babe was beginning to take solid food and the house elves had unpacked all the family's belongings and he had learned where to find them, it was too late. Ella had begun to worry when he attended ad hoc meetings in the staff room, when Persephone strayed a little too far in the orchard, when he soothed Celsus with a brisk walk into Hogsmeade when they were both fractious...and so it went on, worsening by degrees, until her face became shadowed with worry and her voice tremulous with need.

He loved her too deeply to be much more than slightly irritated. Perhaps that had been his greatest mistake. Maybe he had reinforced her neuroses by keeping silent. A few derisive comments and cutting sarcasm might well have cauterised her mental wound and prevented her from turning it into an open sore that festered and grew until it dominated their lives.

He regretted his words at their parting, however. Now was not the time to experiment on how best to bring back the old Ella, for she would not come, not until he returned their daughter to her.

A soft voice interrupted his reverie.

"Are you ready, Severus? We think over here might be the best place..."

Snape nodded at Lupin and stepped over to where he and Tonks stood, facing each so that each was the corner of a triangle of rough ground. As one, they raised their wands above their heads and uttered the incantations, designed by senior Aurors, to locate their quarry.

Gold skeins of light met above their heads, forming a kaleidoscopic cone in the air beneath which the ground and even the very air itself seemed to shimmer and shift. One of the large flat rocks before them began to lose cohesion and they watched as it transfigured back into its original shape; a large cane-handled carpetbag.

The trio lowered their wands, glancing at one another and pointing them at the bag.

"Reveal your secrets!" said Snape, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. At once, the bag started to fill out, as if gases inside it were bubbling erratically.

"Blimey, what's it doing?" breathed Tonks. "I thought I'd seen it all..."

"You have no idea," muttered Snape, advancing on it deliberately. "It contains a whole world within it, volatile and unpredictable; and poorly manufactured, it would seem..."

"Be careful, Severus," warned Lupin. "As you say, we don't know what to expect."

"It hardly matters, Lupin, since I intend to face whatever lies within regardless!"

"Let me go first, Severus," said Tonks. "I'm more experienced in the field – "

"Don't be ridiculous!" he snapped, glaring at her. "Have you forgotten about my history? If so, then I assure you, you are the only Ministry employee that _has_!" His wand arm fell to his side as he turned to Lupin and then back to Tonks." Come after me, if I am not back momentarily."

Lupin nodded and smiled grimly, while Tonks shrugged and worried her bottom lip. Snape leaned over towards the bag, whose clasp snapped open to reveal a gaping black maw that stretched him out of shape and pulled him inside.


	6. A Rescue

**Chapter 6**

****

**_A Rescue_**

"What did you do to it, girl? Tell me!"

She awoke with a start, scrabbling backwards in a vain attempt to escape Pettigrew's grasp. _Why had she let herself fall asleep!_ He held her by her upper arms and was shaking her. His beady, bloodshot eyes bored into her and there were traces of spittle on his lips. He was repulsive, and he hated him. She would make him pay for what he was doing to her.

"What did I do to what?" Persephone asked angrily, finally managing to shake him off.

"The blood, girl! What did you do to the blood? You must have done something, it should have worked!" He sat back on his haunches and nibbled anxiously at his yellowed nails, his eyes darting from side to side as he continued to mutter half under his breath.

She tried not to smirk. She had no idea what she had done, in fact she knew that she couldn't have done anything, but she was glad of his agitation. Perhaps it would buy her a little more time to practise her hexes; not too long, though, as the plateau was fraying more and more with every hour that passed, and she still had no idea what would happen to her.

Pettigrew withdrew a glass vial from the breast pocket of his tattered tweed jacket. It was filled with a viscous dark brownish liquid that looked to Persephone like reconstituted dried blood. He examined it carefully, shook it, and then looked at her speculatively. "I wonder…" he smiled slowly, revealing pointed yellow teeth.

"What's that?" she said, backing away.

"I drew it from my Master's corpse," he explained. "Your small sacrifice made a difference, oh yes…this is the result of my first effort, you see?"

"It doesn't look very good," she sneered. "You've failed him, haven't you?"

"No! No, no, not at all! This is just the first step, do you see?" he wheedled, cradling the vial in one hand while the other caressed it lovingly. "I think I know what I have to do…" he said, ferreting in his jacket pockets and pulling out a slim volume bound in something that looked suspiciously like human skin. The book fell open at a well-thumbed page and his eyes lit up. "Yes! Yes, of course, hah! You mustn't tell him, you know!" he said all at once, suddenly becoming fearful and dropping his voice almost to a whisper.

"Tell who what?"

"My Lord! You mustn't tell him, you must say that I knew at once what must be done! That our success was immediate!"

"What, you mean I have to tell a dead body that you aren't so stupid that you forgot the right way to do the spell?" she said derisively.

"Insolent girl!" he spat, thrusting the book back into his pocket. "I have been my master's most loyal and valued servant!"

"Well, _that's_ alright then!"

"Give me your arm!"

Persephone struggled but he had her arm again and this time he was not about to let it go. "No! Leave me alone! _Engorgio!"_

She yelled out the curse at the top of her voice, hoping to throw him off balance for long enough to enable her to attempt an escape, but without a wand she could not aim and the spell's effect simply glanced off Pettigrew's leg, affecting only his left ankle which swelled alarmingly, causing to howl in surprise and then pain.

"You little – how did you do that? Come here! I haven't finished with you yet!"

He lunged at her before she had the chance to scramble to her feet, pressing his wand to the side of her calf and uttering a string of unintelligible words that stopped Persephone in her tracks.

More dark magic, but nothing that she had ever read before. Pettigrew had injected her with the tip of his wand and was busy pouring the contents of the vial into the wound.

"What are you doing to me? _NO_!" she screamed, but it was too late. Pettigrew stood up at last and stood over her excitedly.

"It needs to be mixed a bit more, girl. His blood intermingled with yours and returned to him. More of your purity, your life force. Yes, and then I will return him to the world to be more glorious than ever before!"

"You are so gross," she said in disgust even as she felt darkness begin to pour into her veins, roiling like the rainless storm clouds above her. She felt sick and turned on to her side, leaning over to spatter hot green bile on to the scrub grass before falling into a half-faint. _No, I can't let this happen_, she thought groggily as she forced herself up onto her elbows.

A greasy sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead and gooseflesh raced along her limbs and down her trunk, but these discomforts were nothing compared to the searing pain that stabbed her head. For a few moments the world shrank to a pinpoint of blinding, agonising light, and then it imploded into her, knocking the breath from her lungs and filling her with its perverse strength.

She was angry, angrier than she had ever been; and she was powerful too. She felt it welling up inside her, expanding exponentially until she felt as if she would burst with it. _Was this what it would feel like, at the Dark Lord's side?_

_A vision of herself, standing at the Dark Lord's side, her soft warm hand clasped between scaly suppurating fingers, cold red eyes burning ice into her soul, branding her, owning her, controlling her, granting her small favours and exacting his reward…_

NO!

_Her brother, grinning impishly over his shoulder as he runs from her, chasing him into the garden and tackling him, rolling in the sweet-smelling grass, attacking him without mercy until laughter leaves him gasping for breath; her mother, calling to them with music in her voice and later an embrace so soft and welcoming, falling asleep in her arms; and her father, oh, her father, tall and proud and so stern, with fire in his eyes and such strength._

Pettigrew was standing a short distance away, bobbing up and down manically as he watched her battle with the dark power that flooded her veins. "What does it feel like, girl?" he asked excitedly. "Tell me!"

"It feels like nothing you have ever known," she said in a low voice. "And like nothing you ever will!" She took a deep breath and imagined her father's hand over hers, the solid warmth of his body against her back and the comfort his rich baritone gave to her. "_Expelliarmus!_"

Pettigrew's wand flew from his grasp straight into Persephone's hand and before he had the chance to do anything other than gape at the empty space where it had been, she had shouted out "Petrificus Totalis!"

She had never cast with a wand before. Her father had expressly forbidden that she touch either her mother's wand or his own. Consequently, it was not altogether surprising that the spell fell short of a complete success. Nevertheless, it worked well enough. Pettigrew's legs were completely immobilised and he fell to the ground, scrabbling futilely with his arms and shouting out words that Persephone had only ever heard late at night when the wind blew a certain way, when the Hog's Head tipped out its straggling customers into what remained of the night.

"You horrid little man!" she shouted, righteous anger swelling in her chest once more as she advanced on him. "I'll show you what it's like, shall I? To be powerless and scared? Then we'll see what a pathetic little nobody you really are!"

_"Persephone!"_

She turned to see her father springing to his feet and coming towards her at a run.

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" she sobbed, Pettigrew's wand slipping from her fingers as she crumpled to the ground with relief. Snape took one look at the cowering form of Pettigrew a short distance away and flicked his wand, muttering a curse that bound the man's arms to his sides and sewed together his lips. Taking his daughter in his arms he crushed her to his chest, feeling her heart pounding wildly and her hands scrabbling for purchase on his robes.

"Are you unharmed?" he asked carefully, his voice cracking.

"Yes. No! I – I don't know, he did something to me…"

He drew back, holding her shoulders so that he could look into her eyes. "What did he do to you?"

"He took my blood, for Voldemort, and then, just now, he gave it back to me, mixed in with…with _his_."

"The Dark Lord's?"

"Yes."

Snape paled visibly. "We have to get you home."

"How, Father? I was going to try and make a Portkey, I've been using magic - please don't be cross - but I don't know if it will work, this is such a strange place!"

"I know, child. Calm yourself. I have been here before, and I have a Portkey. Remus and Tonks are waiting for us."

Snape held his daughter close and thought that he would never be able to let go. She was so small and fragile, how could he ever have thought she was growing up too quickly? She was his little girl, vulnerable and defenceless and he would protect and keep her and never let harm befall her again.

On the other hand, by the time he had arrived she had managed to immobilise Wormtail and take his wand and, unless he was very much mistaken about the look on her face, she had been about to attempt some very dark curses on him. Wormtail was an inadequate little toad, it was true, but for an inexperienced eleven year old girl to best him was an amazing achievement. Perhaps she had grown up even more quickly than he had feared. Perhaps she was his little girl no more.

He hefted her into his arms and she buried her face in his neck, snuffling loudly and wrapping her arms around his neck in a vice-like grip.

"I was so frightened, Daddy!" Ah, it had been a long time since she had called him such. "I want Mummy! Didn't Mummy come too?"

"You mother is at home, with Celsus," he replied. "Don't worry, you shall see her soon."

He carried her over to where Pettigrew lay immobilised, and squatted down, taking rough hold of the other man's collar before activating the Portkey. He felt the familiar tugging in his stomach and they all fell backwards away from the plateau and out of the carpetbag.

Landing on the rocky ground of the headland, Snape cushioned Persephone's fall and released her reluctantly, watching with grim satisfaction as she rolled off him and on to her knees, clutching long blades of grass between her fingers and pulling it up to her nose to inhale its scent.

"I'm free, I'm free!" he heard her whisper, and he knew what she meant. The plateau was a sterile place with neither scent nor breeze, night or day. At least in a prison like Azkaban, one would know that one lived, even if death was preferable.

"It's over now, sweetie!" said Tonks, squatting beside her and placing an arm around her shoulders. "Now come on, over there…Remus and I need to get rid of this awful bag!"

Several containment spells and an _Incendio_ later, all that remained of the carpetbag was a smouldering pile of ashes. Remus gathered these into a hastily transfigured beaker and sealed it tight, and Tonks put it in her deepest pocket and then Disapparated with Pettigrew to the Ministry, while Remus accompanied Snape and Persephone home.

XXXXXXXX

The reunion between mother and child was too much for Snape to bear. He delivered Persephone into Ella's arms, his heart twisting with emotion as Ella struggled not to break down into hysteria in front of her traumatised daughter, and then he withdrew to the kitchen where Remus was undergoing a thorough interrogation by Hermione. The woman's talents were, in a sense, wasted in her chosen field of research, he mused. Far better that she should work for the Ministry as Chief Inquisitor.

He raised an enquiring eyebrow at Caius, who was lounging against the worktop nursing a large mug of coffee, and the younger man produced a similarly steaming mug for Snape.

"You alright?" Caius asked quietly. Snape nodded curtly.

"Persephone is home, thank the Fates."

"What did they do to her, Sev?"

At last, Hermione noticed that a far more likely fount of information had entered the room, and she turned from Remus, ready to question him. Raising a warning hand to her, he sighed and frowned.

"It was all Pettigrew. I still don't know who the other two were and I dare say they'll escape scot free…which is galling. But she's been – contaminated. By the Dark Lord's dessicated blood. I need to call Poppy Pomfrey down here to examine her. I can only guess at what's flowing through Persephone's veins at the moment."

He knew how serious her condition could be. He did not need the collective gasps of his friends to confirm it.

XXXXXXX

All Ella could see was Persephone. The cold, aching hollow of her heart had filled with such force that it was painful. She could not breathe and so she could not think; all she knew was that her daughter, her firstborn, had been returned to her against all the odds.

When breath finally found its way back into her burning lungs it was in great rasping sobs, their sound muffled in Persephone's hair as Ella clasped her to her.

Later, when both had recovered enough for Ella to wipe away her daughter's tears through the veil of her own, they curled up together on the sofa and as Ella stroked Persephone's hair, unable to keep from touching her, the girl told of her experiences.

"I remember that place," Ella said softly. "I was taken there twice. It was – terrifying. Empty and cold."

"It _looked_ normal, sort of," Persephone said. "Like the moors. But when I looked closer, it was all blurry round the edges and nothing seemed real. It's like, the grass had a shape, but it didn't feel like it or smell like it. And it made me feel so…lost."

"Like you'd never be happy again?"

"No, not really. I felt too cross to think like that," she replied prosaically. "I just felt like I didn't know if I'd ever get out, and I really wanted to go to Hogwarts. Oh! Has my letter come?"

"Yes, love, your letter came the day you – on your birthday."

"Oh, good. Anyway, I felt a bit better once I'd started to practise the spells."

"You practised spells? Without a wand?"

"Yeah. I did really well, too! I know there's a law against underage magic, but I didn't think it would matter there."

"No, Seffie, I don't think normal rules apply there," Ella agreed, hugging her and planting a fervent kiss on the top of her head.

They sat in silence for a while, until Persephone lifted her head and said, "Mummy, what was it like for you? How did you get through it, and how did you get out?"

Ella smiled and smoothed Persephone's hair back from her face. "The first time, I had someone else to worry about. I had to be strong for Hermione…although it wasn't easy. We were both injured, you see, and we had to face Voldemort himself."

Persephone shivered and snuggled closer to her mother.

"He was a terrible, terrible man Seffie. No, not even a man. A monster. He showed us…_awful_ things. As for getting out, well… your father saved me."

She remembered, eyes flashing, wand flaring, the fearsome beauty of him, the controlled potency of his rage. How she had clung to him afterwards. How fiercely she had loved him. How fiercely she loved him still.

"Was he really powerful? More powerful than Voldemort?" Persephone asked hopefully.

Ella shook her head slowly. "No, my love. Only Professor Dumbledore was as strong as Voldemort – but he was there too, and Remus and Sirius. And Harry. Without them…well, I don't know what would have happened."

"How did you get away the second time? Did Daddy save you then?"

"No, but he was waiting for me when I came back. I got out the second time because I wore the emerald he gave me and because I loved him, and you, so very much."

"What did he do when you came back? Did he fight a duel?"

"Yes, he did. He caught Rita Skeeter and made sure she went to prison."

"Oh." Silence. And then, "Daddy, Remus and Tonks destroyed the bag today. Why didn't Daddy destroy it back then? Then all of this wouldn't have happened, would it?"

Her voice held a note of reproach and Ella could tell that she was close to tears.

"Oh, sweetie! We can't always get things right, and that time, the bag just disappeared! There was nothing your father or anyone else could do to stop it! When the Ministry of Magic eventually found it, they thought they could keep it safe. They're the ones that should have destroyed it."

"I know," Persephone said in a small voice, "I suppose it's just that...well, when I was a little girl," - Ella's heart swelled with love and she fought to suppress a smile – "I used to think that Daddy could save me from manticores and dragons and lethifolds and three headed dogs and _everything_. And he can't, can he?"

The half-smile froze on Ella's face and she stared unseeing into the fire.

XXXXXXX

Persephone opened the door to her bedroom and stood with her hand on the doorknob, on the threshold. It looked exactly as it had before, rationally she knew that, and yet it seemed different.

She was different. She had learned that much from Madam Pomfrey's worried conversation with her parents just now. They had all thought she had gone to bed after the examination, but she had lingered at the top of the stairs, leaning over the balustrade so that she could just see a small patch of carpet through the library door and, intermittently, her father's boots as he paced the room. Madam Pomfrey's voice was indistinct and Persephone supposed that she must be at the far side of the room, beside the window. It was far easier for her to distinguish the more familiar tones and cadences of her parents, and so it was their side of the conversation on which she concentrated.

Her father was furious, his anger icy cold and calm. That was always bad. Her mother's voice, on the other hand, was deceptively reasonable, as if she was trying to convince herself that everything was fine. Persephone knew that tone well, for it was the one she had used to calm her husband when his brother, Persephone's Uncle Caius, had gone missing in the Himalayas.

That they were talking about her did not surprise her in the least. Madam Pomfrey had just subjected her to a thorough examination, taking samples of her blood and mixing them with a series of potions procured from her father's laboratory and tutting over the strange colours and noxious fumes they produced.

Afterwards, they had turned to Persephone with strained smiles, telling her that it was all finished and that she should go to bed now, for she must be exhausted. Persephone had raised her eyebrows and asked her mother whether she would accompany her, just for a little while…but Ella had simply embraced her a little too tightly and told her that she would follow her shortly. Her father had looked solemn, taking her shoulders in his hands and pressing his lips to her forehead, while Madam Pomfrey had turned away, fussing over the various vials that now cluttered the desk.

And so she had climbed the stairs thoughtfully, reaching the top and loath to go any further without listening out for what they might say. She almost wished she hadn't, now. She would almost rather not know about the maleficent cells that churned relentlessly in her blood as it coursed through her body. That they had no idea what could be done to rid her of Voldemort's poison was mystifying, for she had always thought her parents, in particular her father, to be capable of putting right any wrong that ever befell her.

On the other hand, the tingling in her fingertips and the raw surges of power that crackled though her from time to time were intriguing and filled her with a delicious frisson of excitement. If she had to live with a monster's blood in her, then maybe she could make the most of it and even capitalise on it. Her eyes narrowed as she looked across at the large cupboard in the corner of her room, where her little brother, her test subject, often hid. It might not be so bad.

She stifled a yawn and let her hand fall to her side as she walked slowly across to her bed, allowing the door to swing shut behind her. The counterpane looked warm and inviting and she threw herself forwards on to it, feeling the ribbed chenille rub against her cheek, releasing the light floral scent with which her mother imbued all of their bed linen.

Home. The scent and texture of home. She wriggled over on to her back and stared up at the ceiling rose, counting the flowers that surrounded the pendant light. There were still thirty two. Thus comforted, she let her eyes drift shut, and when Ella stole in several minutes later, she was fast asleep.


	7. A Struggle

**Chapter 7**

_**A Struggle**_

Celsus ran into the kitchen and threw his arms around Ella's waist. "Mum, Seffie's frightening me!"

Ella laughed in surprise but was cut short as her son squeezed her tightly and pressed his face into her robes. Instinctively, her hand rose to stroke his hair in comfort, and movement outside in the orchard caught her eye. Persephone was leaning against the apple tree munching on one of the many fruits that weighed down its branches, and she was staring at them with a cold, calculating look in her eyes. Perturbed, Ella watched her and Persephone dropped her eyes, putting her hand to her forehead as if in pain before falling to her knees.

"What did she say to you, Celsus?" Ella demanded as she broke free from him and headed for the door.

"_I_ don't know," he grumbled, trailing after her sulkily. "I couldn't understand her, it was Latin or something."

By the time Ella reached her, Persephone was lying on the ground with her knees drawn up to her chest, mewling pitifully.

"Seffie! Seffie, what's wrong?" she asked urgently.

"It _hurts_, Mummy! I wanted to stop but I really wanted to do it too, and now it _hurts_! Make it go away, Mummy!" the girl sobbed.

Her face white and drawn, Ella turned to Celsus. "Fetch your father, Celsus! And hurry!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"_Dark magic_, Persephone? Tell me, what makes you believe that you are capable of practicing dark magic?"

Snape's tone was conversational, his words almost casual, but Persephone knew better. He was furious with her. She felt a tell-tale prickle behind her eyes but she would not let herself cry. It wasn't her fault and she wasn't going to apologise. There was something wrong with her, she knew that because she had overheard them on the night of her return. It was Voldemort that made her do it, and when she'd fought it, he'd hurt her. She deserved her father's sympathy and his help, not his disapproval. She wanted him to enfold her in the warmth of his cloak and kiss the top of her head, talking to her softly so that she could feel the low rumble of his voice through the layers of wool.

She bit her lip and mumbled, "Read it in one of your books."

"What did you say? Speak up, girl!"

"I said, I read it in one of your books."

"The operative description being, '_mine_', wouldn't you say?" he countered, arching a brow. "Persephone, much as I welcome your enthusiasm for learning, I have to question your methods. You are eleven years old!"

"Well, Remus told me that when _you_ arrived at Hogwarts when _you_ were eleven, _you_ knew _loads_ of dark hexes! And you _used_ them too!"

"Don't answer back, girl! And don't interrupt!" he snapped. Seeing her subside into sullenness, he continued more gently. "You do not have the necessary skill to differentiate between good and evil. That only comes with – experience. Hard-earned experience. Ah, perhaps we have indulged you too much. We should have paid more heed to your choices of reading material."

"I read them in secret," Persephone shrugged defiantly. "I've been sneaking into your study. I found the secret shelf last year, you didn't hide it very well."

Snape found himself lost for words. He looked at his daughter's face, flesh of his flesh, and was amazed. With her green eyes now downcast and her long lashes dark against her milky white skin, he could see little of her mother in her. She was all Snape, dispassionate and assured of her Fates-given right to learn what she would, when she would. Too young and foolhardy to appreciate the consequences.

He chose his next words carefully.

"And if you had succeeded in casting the spell...what would have happened to your brother?"

"He would have been fine!" Persephone insisted. "You or Mother would have fixed him!"

"What was the spell, Persephone?" he repeated, trying to keep himself from leaping from the bed and spitting out his question.

She rolled her eyes. "It was a simple variation of the leglocker curse, that's all! His legs and feet would have fused together, it would hardly have hurt him at all!"  
"That is hardly the point, Persephone. Your mother and I have brought you up better than that. I am becoming more disappointed by the minute."

"Fine! Leave me alone, then! I can stay in my room and think about what I've done, can't I?"

"Be sure that you do," he said icily, and swept from the room, not trusting himself to continue their discussion.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Snape walked into the library and closed the door behind him with a heavy sigh. A welcoming fire crackled in the grate, its flames licking upwards into the flue, its orange glow silhouetting the figure that stood waiting.

"How is she?" Ella asked quietly.

"I wish I knew," he admitted matter-of-factly. "One minute she is unrepentant, even trying to justify her behaviour, while the next…the next, she is our daughter again and nothing more."

"Oh, Severus!" Ella took three steps towards him and slipped her arms around his waist, looking up into troubled black eyes where heedless shadows danced. "What are we going to do?"

He allowed her to hug him for a brief moment before extricating himself from her embrace and sitting down in one of the leather armchairs that stood beside the fire. He knew that she would not appreciate what he was about to say and thought that a little distance between them might render his words easier for him to bear.

"I believe…" he started carefully with a glance towards her, "Poppy suggested that St Mungo's – "

"_No_! Never!"

Snape sat back in his chair to listen to the expected rebuttal, steepling his fingers.

"I will not have our daughter sent to that place as if she were a – a lunatic, or a criminal, or both!"

"My love, that is precisely what she might become if we allow her to carry on as she has been. Don't you see? She carries within her blood the life force of a lunatic and a criminal, and it will continue to assert its malign power over her admirably strong free will unless we can find a way to counteract it!"

"Then why haven't you _found_ a way?" Ella flashed back at him.

Stung, he fell back into the habit he had thought broken years ago, that of retaliation without thought.

"Funny, I always thought that miracle cures were _your_ speciality – or are you now so sanctified that Persephone should be cured simply by basking in your presence?"

"You heartless bastard! How dare you?" Ella was poised to strike him but his hand grabbed her arm and he rose to his feet even as she tried to twist away from him.

"Ella," he began in exasperation. "Ella, I'm sorry. I apologise, I ought not to have said that."

She turned on him, about to rail against him once more, but suddenly the fight left her and her shoulders slumped.

"Severus, I'm scared. My little girl's gone and there's nothing I can do about it," she said hopelessly. "There's absolutely nothing I can do!"

He held her then and they stood silently, each lost in their own thoughts. Ella was the first to speak again.

"St Mungo's couldn't do anything for her, Severus. They'd lock her up. They wouldn't try to cure her."

"I know."

"Then why would Poppy even suggest such a thing? And why would you even entertain the idea?"

"Because one of these days we might have to accept that we're losing her, Ella."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Thirty two flowers on the ceiling rose. They were all still there, plaster flowers whose detail had been dulled by layers of paint, years of covering the cracks. She could see one, though, all the same. Small, hairline really, almost imperceptible from a distance. But if she stood up on her bed, on her tiptoes just inches away from the light, it would be far more noticeable.

Of course, the house had been standing for years and the crack was just settlement. There was no real likelihood of the whole house falling down; but it still reminded her of her parents. She wondered how much of a crack there would need to be in their marriage before the family was rent asunder. She wondered whether anyone noticed how strained they were around one another.

Persephone noticed, and she minded; but only sometimes. Since her return, they all seemed to dance around one another, never quite telling the truth. She knew it wasn't her fault, of course; she didn't ask to be abducted. But there was a monster within her now and every so often her blood would run cold and baleful and she would hear shrill laughter deep within her soul. It would bubble up inside her, burning acid through her gut and up into her chest, and she would let it erupt exultantly, riding terrified on the wave of maleficence until it subsided leaving her breathless and intrigued.

What would it be like, to succumb? Would it be glorious? She rather thought that it would, but she feared it and knew she was right to do so. If she gave it the free reign she knew it sought, it would consume her and leave her no more than a husk, in all outward appearances Persephone Snape still, but with a dead soul. She didn't think she would like that very much. Unfortunately, she no longer believed that her father could simply wave his ebony wand and make everything all right. He was fallible, after all, and her recent realisation of that disturbing fact had thrown everything into doubt.

She sighed. Things had changed so much of late, and her most of all. Soon she would be going to Hogwarts, something she had looked forward to for years, and yet now she found herself almost dreading it. To share a dormitory with several other girls, to see her mother only at weekends, to call her father Professor Snape and accord him the respect due to someone of his reputation…it would all seem so strange. At least when she came home, she reminded herself, there would still be thirty two flowers round the ceiling rose; and hopefully the cracks wouldn't be any the worse, without her to cement them all together.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ella lay awake and alone, wondering when her husband would come to bed and whether she minded if, as had happened so frequently of late, he did not. She had left him in the library, where he had been intent on poring over an arcane textbook on permanent loan from the restricted section of Hogwarts' library. She had offered to help him in his search for an antidote for Persephone's infection, but he had demurred and she knew better than to press him. They worked well together, had done from the early days of their acquaintance when Headmaster Dumbledore had thrown them together in a most unsubtle manner to work on a comparison of Muggle and magical herbal remedies, but there were times when her presence was not required. He would never actively discourage her attendance, it was true, but then he did not need to. She knew him exceedingly well.

Sometimes it was easier to be on her own. Oh, she loved him, he was her life's mate and she feared losing him more than she did her own flesh and blood, her children; but at the same time he frustrated her when he refused to understand the workings of her heart.

He rarely gave any credence to her fears. Earlier in their relationship he had been more demonstrative, she felt, as if were he not to cleave to her in all things then she would leave. He had been so emphatic in his devotion. She had been the centre of his world, for years. Now…well, now was relative, and depended on her mood.

Most of the time, Ella was a happy woman. She had a devoted husband, two perfect children who were living testaments to their love. She wanted for nothing, and she was content. However, there were times when a needling voice inside her head spoke to her of betrayal and boredom, over-familiarity and contempt. She could never identify the source of the voice but it sang a siren song and wore down her confidence as surely as waves lashing rocks. She thought it might be something to do with the irrational fears that had blighted their early life together, where she had been convinced that unless she took complete control of her environment and all the people in it, some calamity would befall them. She still felt that way, from time to time. It was a constant battle, and one that only part of her could ever win, for whatever facet of her character was the victor, the vanquished would still weep.

Severus had put up with so much, He had tried, as far as he was able, to understand; but she knew that he really had no clue how desperate she sometimes felt. From time to time she managed to convince herself that the time would come when the shades would fall from his eyes and he would see his wife for what she really was; a controlling, manipulative, intrinsically selfish harridan. At times like these she would see herself only in shades of the deepest black and any redeeming features she might have were nullified to the point of extinction.

She was worthless and unworthy of his love, and it was only a matter of time before he realised it.

He would ask her why, when her despair became so palpable that it sat spectre-like between them, and she would tell of her fears; but he would tell her simply that he chose her, adored her above all others and would never leave her. He saw her as a bright, blinding sun, filling his world with undreamed-of delight and suffusing everyone she met with warmth. He could not conceive of ever feeling differently towards her, which was why while he worried about the fragility of her mind he could in no way empathise or understand its workings. She worried about things that, in his eyes, could simply never happen, and he could not seem to convince her in such a way as to fully banish her fears.

Ella turned over on to her side and drew the coverlet around her neck, huddling beneath it and staring at the empty space beside her. She supposed that his very inability to comprehend her insecurity was, of itself, proof that her fears were groundless. She knew, or at least the larger part of her knew, that he loved her with a profundity that was rare and stronger than many people would enjoy in ten lifetimes. She ought not to need to convince herself of such an obvious truth, and particularly when their daughter's sanity was at stake. The fact that she did spoke volumes about her, really…she was selfish and thoughtless after all, and therefore undeserving of his love…it was only a matter of time before he realised it, and then her world would come crashing down about her ears…

She flung back the coverlet impatiently and got out of bed. Now was not the time to wallow in unwarranted self pity. She crept out of the bedroom and along the short corridor that led to the children's rooms. The first door was ajar, and she poked her head round to see Celsus sprawled across his bed, his mop of curly brown hair a dark exclamation point against the white bedlinen. He was fast asleep, and she felt a rush of affection flood through her.

Taking a step backwards, making sure to avoid the creaking floorboard, she advanced to Persephone's room. This door was firmly shut, as usual, and she turned the porcelain knob as stealthily as she could and pushed it open a little. Persephone was sleeping too, but fitfully. Her legs were twisting and tangling the blankets and her long black hair covered her face as she tossed her head from side to side. Concerned, Ella entered the room and went to sit on the side of the bed. Moonlight cast an argent pallor across the sleeping girl's face and Ella noticed iridescent beads of sweat line her brow. She traced her hand across Persephone's forehead to wipe them away and gasped as she caught a glimpse of crimson when her daughter's eyes fluttered open for an instant, recoiling from the recognition therein. _If he could make his presence felt as she slept, then how long until he consumed her every waking hour, possessed her body and soul?_


	8. Another Way

**Chapter 8**

_**Another Way**_

Ella backed slowly out of the room, her eyes wide with horror at what she had seen. Her daughter was under the malign influence of a monster they had all thought long dead. How could they have been so wrong about his supposed defeat? How could they have carried on with their lives, careless of the threat that simply slept, biding its time until circumstance gave it yet another chance for revenge?

Her daughter. Her beloved child. Her all.

She turned as she reached the door to the landing, and fled along the short corridor, running down the stairs as desperately as if wolves were snapping at her heels. She burst in on her husband just as he had begun to decant a clear blue potion from one flask into another.

"Severus! Severus, it's getting worse, I _know_ it is!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Some time later, Severus Snape sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. He could allow himself a few moments of despair, since Ella was still to join him. They had agreed to try to rest, in the hope that a meeting with Albus Dumbledore in the morning might produce a possible solution. For many years, Dumbledore had been the only wizard Voldemort had feared. Snape hoped against all hope that the old man still had a few tricks up his sleeve, for it appeared that they might be running out of time.

He felt helpless. In all the years he had spent working for first Dumbledore and then the Order, he had maintained such mastery of his emotions, exhibited such cold efficiency, that he had, ultimately and to his grim satisfaction, prevailed. He had stayed alive. He had never let his mask slip, and Voldemort had not suspected where his true loyalties lay until it was too late. As a spy, he had been an unqualified success.

In all his years as a teacher, month after month after miserable month of trying to jam essential and elegant facts into heedless dunderheads, he had never given up on a student, however inept. Even such hopeless cases as Neville Longbottom and the youngest Creevey had benefited from his teaching. He brooked no failure in his students, and so considered himself a success in his profession.

His research, too, had been gratifyingly meaningful. Although his difficult position had prevented him from being as productive as he would have liked, and his history had tarnished whatever reputation his achievements might have allowed, still he had enjoyed limited success.

He had never thought to have a happy life, but then he had met Ella. She had always been, and always would be, the lodestone of his life. All that he did, all that he was, revolved around her. He had loved her to distraction from very early on in their acquaintance, and now, after eleven years spent basking in the warmth of her company, he truly felt that she was part of him, integral to his sense of who and where he was in the world. He knew she felt the same, but he worried about her because sometimes, and he did not know why, she would torture herself with groundless fears and wild imaginings, convinced that she would lose all she held dear for the incomprehensible reason that she was somehow not worthy of happiness. Of all women, he felt, she deserved to walk on rose-strewn footpaths all her life, surrounded by gladness and love.

He wondered whether her neuroses stemmed from the loss of her parents and baby sister when she was barely twenty years old. He had been responsible for the lethal poison that had despatched them so cruelly. He had witnessed their death throes, appalled and repelled as his fellow Death Eaters stood around making sport of their suffering. He had done nothing.

He had confessed all to Ella many years before, shortly after their marriage, and she had forgiven him; so, indeed, had the spectres of her parents. Nevertheless, he would never forgive himself. He loved her so deeply that to think about causing her any pain, or to remember the pain he had unwittingly caused her in the past, cut through him like a knife. He was devoted to making her happy, and to doing the same for the children she had borne him. All in all, and to his endless surprise, he had succeeded. Failure would have been unthinkable.

Failure _was_ unthinkable. Finding a cure for his daughter was the single most important obligation of his life so far, and was proving to be the least attainable. He did not know what he would do, if he lost Persephone. He did not know what would happen to Ella. He could not bear to lose her too. As for Celsus, the son he had always longed for but had never hoped to have, who looked just like Ella but who had his eyes, his irrepressible boy…he would be crushed. Snape's entire family would be ruined.

He could not let it happen. He _would_ not.

"Severus, what are you doing?"

He was gripping his knees so tightly that his knuckles were white and his shoulders hunched in fear. He opened his eyes with a start to see that Ella had re-entered the room and was slipping the silk robe from her shoulders, ready to climb into their bed. Naked underneath, her softly rounded body provoked an instinctive reaction in him and he let out an involuntary gasp. She drew near to him and ran her hand through his hair.

"Nothing, love. It was nothing," he murmured in what he hoped was a convincing tone. He heard her sigh and she gathered him to her so that his nose pressed into the comforting flesh of her belly, her breasts grazing the top of his head. His arms closed around her back, his elbows across her buttocks. Even after so many years of loving her, of making love to her and being loved in return, he still found himself irresistibly aroused by her.

He willed his erection to go away. It was completely inappropriate to be thinking about making love to her when their daughter was in such mortal peril. They had not made love since the eve of Persephone's birthday. How could they? They had been desperately worried, and their fears had hardly abated since their reunion. The atmosphere had hardly been conducive to passion or romance. Indeed, the atmosphere between Snape and his wife had been too jagged, too raw and painful for even the usual domestic civilities and they had spent day after day in distant yearning, each unwilling to emerge from their protective carapace to offer any commiseration to the other.

Breathing was problematic, with his nose and mouth enfolded by the jasmine-scented warmth of his wife, but he ignored his discomfort and pressed his lips to her skin, nuzzling softly as he held her close, wanting this rare moment of unity to last. He missed her so much, body and soul. She had been there and yet not there, and he had been painfully aware that she was drifting back into depression. Gentle fingers ran through his hair and he heard her whisper his name,

"Severus…"

He took it as a reproach and he began to withdraw, half-guilty, half-resentful at the implied rejection. Could she not see how he needed the comfort offered by her warmth? However, he had been too quick to misinterpret her meaning as she refused to let him go, leaning over him to prevent him removing himself from her embrace.

"I need you," she said. He looked up, into her eyes. Green as a stormy sea on the cusp of twilight, they were, and he wanted to drown in them, in her, to sink into her and let her caresses envelop him and carry him off into darkness. Her hands had been stroking his hair, pressing his head to her, but now they fluttered across his face, searching its lines and contours for the comfort that years of familiarity and mutual need could offer her.

Ah, but he needed her too. As he reached to pull her down to him with a gesture that was as natural to him even as breathing, he felt a calm wash over him in waves. She was here and she was his, and she would heal his soul and soothe his anguish. She would ease the worry away, if only for a little while.

Acquiescent, she allowed him to pull her down until both lay side by side across the bed. Her skin was peach and ivory in the flickering candlelight, soft and cool as he ran his hands along her curves. Her eyes darkened and she pulled his head down to her for a kiss, tender at first and then, as his hand crept along her spine, more urgent. His tongue met hers surely, expertly winding together as they gave and took in turn. He ended the kiss and she sighed, the sweet exhalation pulling an invisible cord that led straight to his groin. This was wrong, it was right, he was frantic with worry for his daughter but _oh_, he needed his wife. He dipped down and buried his nose in the luscious warmth of her breasts, bringing his hand to knead them and then teasing the underside with slow, feather-light strokes of his tongue. As she arched into his caress her nipple brushed his cheek, and he covered it with his mouth with a moan. Nipping lightly, he felt it harden still further and her hand tightened in his hair as she hissed his name. He began to suckle in earnest, feeling the pebbled areola rub against the inside of his lips and her taut nipple scrape against the roof of his mouth. He was almost delirious with the sensation as his hand stroked along her belly and delved into the soft wet warmth that proved to him beyond all doubt that this was right, so right, and so vital.

"Oh, Ella…" he murmured as he felt her scrabbling to shrug his robe from his shoulders, skin losing contact with skin for a few long moments as he threw it off and let it fall to the floor. She wrapped her legs around him now, ready for him and flushed with want.

"Now, Severus!" she said. "_Please_, now!"

He did not need to be told twice. Still lying on their sides, he hooked her leg high on his hip and placed his hand on the small of her back, pulling her towards him until her wet folds caressed his aching erection. He rocked his hips slightly, coating himself in her wetness as it mingled with his own, and then he pushed into her slowly, holding his breath as he concentrated on the exquisiteness of her sheathing him, gazing into her eyes and seeing his own passion reflected there and magnified tenfold. He groaned, the knowledge of her unconditional love for him overwhelming him as it always did.

Connected in the most exquisite way he knew, they wrapped their arms around one another and pressed their foreheads together as they began to rock their hips, each of his long, slow thrusts met by a confirmation that his wife wanted this as sincerely as he did. It was so right, this mutual need, the giving and the taking of the best comfort each could offer; the comfort that affirmed that they were stronger together than apart, that they belonged, no matter what.

No matter what.

He ran his hand up Ella's back and tangled it in her hair, winding the locks around his fingers until they were imprisoned in wild knots. Ah, but she ensnared him still and he was glad of it. The hair at the back of her neck was damp now and her forehead was beaded with sweat as a result of their passion. It commingled with his own, and he drew away to gaze down into her eyes. _I love you._ He managed to withdraw his hand from her hair and ran it down her cheek. Tasting the salt sweat on her top lip, he groaned and speeded up his thrusts as she ground her hips against his, blindly searching for release.

He slid his hand down between their two bodies, over the swells of her breasts and her belly and down deep into the thatched forest where they joined. He sought out her most sensitive place and used the lightest touch of his long, sensitive fingers to flick across the hardened nub until she gasped and tensed. He pushed as deep into her as he could and held still while she convulsed around him, crying out his name as if it was a prayer. Once her orgasm had begun to subside he moved again, prolonging her enjoyment and at the same time letting go, so that her muscles contracted around him and massaged him. He came in a heated rush of ecstasy, a ball of fire that began in his groin and flowed in a rush along his shaft with such exquisite force that it left him short of breath, breathing her hair into his mouth with each gasp.

For those few moments of bliss, and the moments of drugged satiety that followed, they were all they were and all they needed, and their worries ceased even to exist.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ella was awake at dawn the following morning, anxious and pale as she slipped from the bed and drew on her robe before looking out through the casement window over the rolling fields that led to the mist-shrouded edifice of Hogwarts school. They were to meet the Headmaster there later that morning and she feared the worst. What could be done for her daughter that her brilliant husband had not already tried?

She turned back to the bed. His long lean frame was outlined under the white cotton sheet and his chest and arms, just shades darker than the bed linen, held her gaze like a starving man's would be riveted by a laden table. Her pulse quickened as she remembered their lovemaking. It had been such a long time and she had not known until they had joined how profoundly their separateness had saddened her; and yet, she had done it to herself. She had instigated their distance and he, proud, reticent man that he was, had allowed it.

His eyes were open, and he was watching her. His black hair lay across her pillow and his eyes entreated her. _Come back to me._

"Did I wake you?" she asked softly.

"No. I barely slept," he replied.

It was true. Each had drifted in and out of sleep once the satiety of their passion had worn off. Clinging to one another like flotsam on an ebb tide, one offering comfort while the other slept, they had helped one another through the still silence of the night until at last both had succumbed to fitful slumber.

Purplish shadows underlined his dark eyes and her heart wept, for the man she loved, the lover she needed, the father whose role was such a terrifying yet yearned for responsibility. All his fears were right there in his eyes, plain for her to see.

She crossed to the bed as he lifted the sheet, and pressed her body against his even as she drew his head to her chest. He wound his arms around her and let out a deep, shuddering breath and she screwed her eyes tight shut, willing the burning, prickling sensation to fade. For a moment they clung together once more and then he pushed himself away from her and got out of bed. She knew what he was doing, and she knew why. Withdrawing into himself, putting on his mask of impassive control, he sought the strength to save his daughter.

Hermione had offered to take Celsus and Persephone in to Hogsmeade that morning. As a treat, they were going to Jolyon Dearborn's Magical Munchtime for brunch. The proprietor, cousin of Gilderoy Lockhart, would fuss over them and ply them with fairy cakes and quiche, and then they would no doubt empty their purses at Honeydukes. At any rate, Ella and Snape would be able to spend as long as they needed with Albus Dumbledore. Snape just hoped that it would be time well spent.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Headmaster welcomed them in to his office with a smile, but the customary twinkle in his eyes was noticeably absent. After they had taken a seat by the fire, Snape asked,

"Well, Albus? Have you any idea where we should start?"

"I have been giving the matter much thought, these last few days. Oh yes," he added, looking over the top of his spectacles at their surprised faces. "Ever since Poppy came to me with the results of her examinations of Seffie. I suspected that she might… deteriorate."

Ella let out a sob, and her husband stood and began to pace the room.

"And?" he asked waspishly.

"And…I am very much afraid that I have, ah, drawn a blank."

"What?" Snape wheeled round to face him with incredulity. It was unthinkable that the great Albus Dumbledore could be at a loss. Even though he, Snape, had failed in that most primeval instinct of protecting his daughter, still he had thought that his friend and mentor, greatest wizard of his generation, would be able to help.

"Severus, you must understand, Voldemort spent half a lifetime immersed in the darkest of magic, moulding it and shaping it to his will, absorbing it into the very fibre of his being. His abilities were incomparable, his skill at bending and grafting arcane procedures unthinkable."

"So you can't help her?"

"I fail to see how any wizard could replicate what he has done to infiltrate your daughter. I fear that the convolutions he has wrought have been woven into her essence."

Fawkes shifted on his perch and purred sadly. Ella looked up hopefully, wiping her eyes.

"I am sorry, Ella, but no. Fawkes can be of no help this time. Poppy brought me a small sample of Seffie's blood and together we encouraged him to shed a tear…it had no effect."

"This can't be," Ella whispered, shaking her head. "It _can't_!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Persephone was bored. Mr Dearborn had been his usual unctuous self at lunchtime and she had giggled as Hermione tried to keep a straight face while ordering for them, but soon she had found herself looking around for something to do. Celsus had been listing all the sweets he intended to buy at Honeydukes and his piping voice had grated on her nerves until she had itched to lunge out at him and muzzle his mouth with her hand.

Instead she had concentrated on Mr Dearborn, trilling away to himself in the café's kitchen, concentrating on the nasal quality of his tone. Soon, to her immense satisfaction, his singing stopped and he began to cough, phlegm obstructing his breathing in a most noticeable fashion.

Persephone smirked to herself and sat back in her chair, pretending to listen indulgently to her little brother. She felt energised and empowered and wondered on whom she should practise next. Neither of her companions, of course; it would not do for Hermione to notice her potency. Perhaps Mr Honeyduke could choke on a sugar quill? That might be amusing. In fact, if the shop was busy, she might even be able to experiment! Then again, an outbreak of asphyxiation might attract attention. Questions might be asked.

She needed a steady supply of creatures on which she could experiment with some of the less socially acceptable curses. She still had no wand, it was true, but that mattered less and less as her powers grew. Perhaps an expedition to the Forbidden Forest was required. Alone, of course. She chuckled to herself and did not see the worried frown that flickered over Hermione's face.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After their meeting with Albus Dumbledore, it was a very dejected Ella and Snape that returned to their home on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Neither wanted the comfort of the other. That had been for a time when there was still hope, and none remained now. Now each had withdrawn into themselves, shoring themselves up by erecting a protective barrier against complete and irrevocable collapse.

They could well imagine that the death of a child was the worst that could happen to a parent. They knew too well that coping with the abduction of a child was searingly painful. What, then, of the slow descent of a beloved daughter into madness and possession, with no hope of a cure? How could they carry on, after that? And yet, how could they not? Persephone would always be their daughter, whether she was the perfect product of their love or a psychopath rotting in a secure cell in an asylum. And then there was Celsus, their son, no less beloved but always following in the hallowed footsteps of his sister. They had to be strong, for his sake. They had to show him that he was no less loved, and that he still warranted the attention that was lavished on him before their lives had taken so desperate a turn.

Such were the thoughts that consumed them as they flew home, only to find an anxious Hermione waiting for them at the front gate.


	9. An Escape

**Chapter 9**

_**An Escape**_

For a supposedly intelligent woman, Hermione Lupin could be a complete moron at times, thought Persephone as she sat at the top of the stairs. When they had arrived home, Persephone had gone to her room to read, and Hermione had taken Celsus into the kitchen where he was set on showing her his collection of Wicked Warlock comics. It had not been long, however, until Persephone had heard Hermione's footsteps clip along the hall to the front door, which had opened and not closed again. Her curiosity piqued, she had stolen from her room to her favourite spot on the top step of the second turn of the staircase, out of sight of anyone downstairs but sufficiently close to hear any conversation.

Sure enough, after a few minutes she heard her parents approach along the front path, and Hermione's urgent tones as she greeted them. As they came back through the door, Persephone could hear their conversation quite clearly. Hermione was talking in a stage whisper and it was totally indiscreet. Persephone was amazed that her father hadn't seen fit to silence her with his rapier tongue, because she was wittering on about how Persephone kept getting a strange look in her eyes, and how she had smirked behind her hand when Mr Dearborn had succumbed to a coughing fit in the café, and so on ad nauseam…No, for a know-it-all like her honorary aunt, Hermione was a thoughtless fool. Then they had gone into the study and closed the door, so Persephone had been able to hear nothing more.

Irked, she crept down the stairs and positioned herself at the keyhole. They hadn't even bothered to cast a simple Silencing charm on the room, which was lucky for her but made her roll her eyes in disgust. She had heard all about their work for the Order and quite frankly, sometimes she was amazed they hadn't got themselves killed several times over. A sharp stab of eldritch anger heated her blood for an instant as she thought about the now defunct Order of the Phoenix, and then was gone. All of the grown-ups in her life were so lax these days!

Celsus was sitting at the kitchen table but he could not see her, since the door was half shut. A pity it was not closed all the way, for he was singing to himself as he flipped through the pages of his comic and occasionally punctuating the action on the page with exclamations of his own.

"Kazam! Whizz! Pow!"

His noisiness meant that she was only able to catch snatches of the conversation from the study, but what she heard was more than enough.

_Dumbledore has no answers…St Mungo's…What else can we do?... Becoming dangerous…Must think of Celsus too…_

Persephone's crimson-limned eyes narrowed and the part of her that was no longer an eleven year old girl began to plan her escape.

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Dawn had not yet broken over the Forbidden Forest and the stars still glimmered against the slowly lightening blue sky. Three figures stood in a clearing, staring up into the heavens.

"He is coming."

"He? It is a girl child, isn't it?"

"It matters not. It is _he_ that comes. Thus is it written."

"The meaning is unclear…"

"No."

"Yet we are the stronger. We could overcome him."

"No, Firenze. You tarried too long at the castle and it has clouded your Sight. The ways of men are not our concern."

"He is a man no longer…"

"But he will be again."

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The sun seemed reluctant to rise the following morning. It lingered shyly behind the high peaks and crags of the mountains, only emerging when sufficient clouds had gathered to cloak it from view. When, finally, it showed itself, it was through a veil of grey that colour-washed the landscape, muting the green fields and purple heathers with a whispering drizzle that sheened the cobbled streets and quickly swallowed up a furtive, cloaked figure as it made its way out of the village.

No-one had heard her leave. She had stolen down the stairs more than an hour before, when darkness still cradled the house and had only just begun to retreat from the quiet hillsides. Upon reaching the front door she had hesitated, and crept to the kitchen to fill a bag with food from her mother's larder, lingering a while until she was certain that the creaking she had heard from an upstairs room was simply her brother turning in his sleep. A few more moments spent listening by the front door, still more in the storm porch after she had engaged the latch, waiting to ensure that no early risers in the village would witness her escape, and then she was on her way, walking rapidly into the embracing shadows.

Now she sat under the branches of an oak tree, sheltering from the pervasive drizzle that had dogged her footsteps between her home and the Forbidden Forest, and breakfasting on soft rolls and cream cheese. She would venture in to the Forest as far as she dared and then _he_ would take her further, and she would learn all that he had to teach her.

She wasn't afraid. What was there to fear, for one who had faced the encroaching nothingness of the plateau? What violation could possibly be worse than the contamination she had already suffered? What could she learn from the Forest that _he_ could not teach her?

She finished her meal, and looked around impassively. There was little sound. Small animals lived here, and birds nested in the high branches, but they were still and watchful now, sensing an interloper in their midst. Now and then she heard rustling in the undergrowth, and then a pregnant silence. The forest seemed to breathe again only when she turned her attention from the source of the noise, and she smiled grimly to herself. She would not be caught out. Let the forest and its denizens wait and wonder. She would venture further, and she would capture what animals she could. As her powers grew, as she was sure that they would, with practice, she would become a fine huntress. She would rival Artemis herself! She would crown herself queen of the forest in a coronet of holly and ivy, fashion an oaken staff and make a bed of soft moss, drink water from a babbling spring and sleep under the stars.

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Severus Snape woke to a silent household later that morning. For a few blissful seconds he luxuriated in the warmth of the silken body pressed to his, his breath catching in his chest as the swell of love he felt each time he awoke broke over him. Then it all washed away as he remembered his daughter, and the battle they appeared to be losing. A chill stole across his flesh, goosebumps standing the fine black hairs of his arms on end. He shivered and drew the blanket across, pulling it to his chin as Ella moaned a sleepy protest and sighed in her sleep.

He was awake now, and would sleep no more that morning. How easy it had always been, with Ella, to lie languorously abed each morning, cursing the encroaching day and the demands on their time, wanting to wrap his limbs around her and take his time waking her, and loving her, and making love with her. How long ago it all seemed. Had it really been less than three weeks? Somehow he had the feeling that things had begun to fray at the edges quite some time before…but he had blinded himself to the signs because they were too much for him to bear.

There was no happily ever after. For a cynic such as Snape that should have been a given, but eleven years of loving Ella had mellowed him and made him realise there was happiness to be had in the world. And he had, indeed, been happy. So happy that he had ignored Ella's anxiety and over-protectiveness, dismissing it as a sign of how devoted a wife and mother she was, and congratulating himself on his good fortune. This was a fine and a healthy attitude to take, and insofar as it went, was an accurate summation of their marriage; however, Ella was, and always had been, an open book to him, and he had neglected to read between the lines to find the secret subtext of her psyche.

He had thought to understand her so well. He had been an inconsiderate fool, taking for granted her happiness simply because he loved her so, and she loved him. Love was enough; but only most of the time.

He dressed quickly and silently, and Ella was still asleep as he closed the door behind him and went downstairs. Making himself a cup of hot, strong coffee he sat at the kitchen table nursing it in his hands as he stared into space, deep in thought.

Minutes passed, minutes he spent going over and over the same old ground in his head, casting about for a new twist on an old potion, anything that would help him bring his daughter back. He wanted her innocent again, not despoiled by a monster's blood, corrupted by his depravity.

Eventually, he realised that he had been gazing at the kitchen door and the cloaks that hung neatly from four pegs that were screwed in to the wood around three inches from the top of the door. There were four pegs, one for each of their cloaks. There were only three cloaks hanging on the back of the door. Persephone's had gone.

_Persephone had gone_.

"ELLA!"

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She had never been the sort of girl who talked to herself. It was a silly, childish thing to do, and Celsus did it all the time. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now, walking through the sun-dappled undergrowth between aged trees with gnarled branches and boles like all-seeing eyes.

She was a little afraid now, she wasn't ashamed to admit it. Her confidence had drained away and she thought that _his_ influence was on the wane, for now. She wanted to allow herself to feel relieved and being given a respite from the drive of his ambition, but she didn't dare. She didn't want to face the repercussions, for repercussions would surely follow. She concentrated hard and began to construct the wall again. Several bricks had crumbled during his last onslaught, while she had been on her way to the forest, and she needed to repair the damage. It was becoming frighteningly easy to wish her brother ill, for no matter how she tried to rationalise it, her desire to practise dark magic on him wasn't healthy, not really, and she suspected that her thirst for power wasn't actually her own to quench. Building a mental wall in her head was as effective a way as she knew for keeping _him_ out of the innermost reaches of her mind, difficult though it was when he made her crave the knowledge he offered. She wondered whether her father would be proud of her efforts. He was a superb Occlumens, or so he often told her. With practice, she would best him. She knew it. _And with the power that surged through her veins she would be unstoppable…_No! No…not yet…Persephone replaced a few more bricks until the edifice stretched unbroken from one side of her mind to the other, and when she closed her eyes she could see it, tall and grey and impregnable, at least for a little while.

She trudged on, deeper into the forest where the shadows darkened and the treetops huddled together, whispering fretfully of the interloper that dared presume so far. The susurrations disturbed her and she tensed, jumping at every snapping twig and rustling bracken until she became quite cross with her lack of fortitude.

The sun had reached its zenith by the time she decided to stop again. Her feet were sore and she had gone over on her ankle at least three times on half hidden tree roots that seemed determined to wrong-foot her. She came across a fallen tree whose largest bough was at the right height for a tall girl to find a comfortable seat in a dip along its length, and she rummaged in her backpack for her flask and some pork pies.

While she was eating, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched, although she looked all around her and could see nothing untoward. She had always found the description of a person being so taken by surprise that they jumped out of their skin to be a ridiculous exaggeration, but when she heard a low voice behind her, she knew that she had been wrong.

"You have ventured far into our forest, teacher's daughter."

Eyes wide with fear, Persephone turned around very slowly and found herself staring at the legs and torso of a dun and white centaur. Swallowing hard, she raised her head and looked bravely up into his eyes. They were impassive, she decided, neither friendly nor hostile.

"I didn't know the forest belonged to you, sir," she said pertly. "May I have your permission to continue my journey?"

The centaur stared at her inscrutably for several moments, during which she fought an urge to fidget, before raising his eyes to the canopy of leaves far above them and saying, "Where is your journey's end, child of darkness?"

She was not sure that she liked the sobriquet he gave her, but it thrilled her anyway and filled her with sufficient self-importance to speak her mind without fear.

"I think that's my concern, if you please. I'll travel as far as I need to."

"Or as far as you are allowed…" His hooves scraped the dirt and he looked down to see the patterns they had made in the earth before fixing her with his gaze again. "You know that our kind care little for the concerns of men, and less still for their young. Your welfare is not my concern. However, it is written in the sky that one will come whose power walks a fine line between well and ill…"

"Power doesn't know whether it's good or bad, it just is. It's its _application_ that can be good or bad."

"And the one who wields it; on which side of the line will she fall?"

Persephone gave the centaur her best withering look.

"Why, on her own side, of course!"

The centaur threw back his head and laughed. "Take care, little girl, for not all of my kin are as indulgent of such arrogance! If I had not spent so long in the company of men and their young, I would have rather trampled you into the ground than enjoy such discourse!"

Persephone shrugged. She had heard of Firenze the centaur, and she doubted very much that he would leave her to the mercy of his fellow centaurs. And as for them, well, she saw little reason to fear them. Confidence was surging through her veins again and she knew that in a very short time she would wield her magic over all the denizens of the forest, not just the smallest animals. She would control them all.

For now, though, she needed to penetrate deeper into the forest, where she could vanish into the shadows and the dense undergrowth would muffle the squeaks and cries of her test subjects.

She packed the remains of her luncheon into her bag, and stood. "I'll keep an eye out for them, then," she said. "Goodbye, sir."

The centaur's brown eyes lingered on her face for a moment, and then he inclined his head before turning and picking his way back through the undergrowth. She watched until she was sure that he had disappeared from plain sight and then she took the opposite path, heading deeper.

Her senses were heightened now and there was an urgency deep within her that she knew could only be assuaged by surrendering to _his _will. Unable to be anything other than acquiescent, she pressed on, faster and faster, unerring as she ducked low branches and skipped over exposed roots, searching more for a feeling than a place, for a rightness that would tell her she had reached her goal.


	10. A Discovery

****

Chapter 10

A Discovery

"Where can she have gone?" Snape demanded, running his hand through his hair in exasperation as he strode from the fire to the window and back again, as if the very act of looking down the path to the gate would somehow make her appear there.

"How should _I_ know?" Ella replied fretfully, fastening the buttons on Celsus' coat as she prepared to fly him to Hogwarts to be minded by Madam Pomfrey while they searched for their errant daughter. "She could be _anywhere_, I can never tell what she's thinking any more!"

"Really? You surprise me!" he snapped. "I'm surprised you don't insist that we all write down our every waking thought for your examination on a daily basis, as a matter of course!"

Ella shot him a look of hurt and fury in equal measure, and drew her lips into a tight line. He knew that she would not retaliate in front of the boy, and he regretted his words. They would not help, they would simply serve to reinforce the self-made barrier they seemed bent on erecting between them.

Celsus mumbled something sulkily, his chin pressed into his chest.

"What's that, Celsus?" Ella demanded. "What did you say?"

"I said, I bet I know where she's gone!"

"Then tell us, it's very important!"

"Don't see why I should, I'm glad she's gone and I hope she never comes back!"

"Celsus! You don't mean that!"

"She said she'd take me and leave me there, she used to say it all the time! And then she started saying she'd do all sorts of things to me, just because she could!"

"Take you where, boy?" Snape knelt in front of his son and took him by the shoulders. "Tell me where you think she's gone!"

"The Forbidden Forest, of course!"

Ella looked at Snape over the top of their son's head and they came to an unspoken accord.

"You take Celsus to Poppy, and I'll fly straight to the Forest. I'll see you there," said Ella. She had grabbed her cloak and was halfway out of the door before he could do anything but concur.

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Ella hovered over the forest, dipping as the wind ebbed and holding firm as the first falling leaves of the autumn eddied around her in the updraughts. Almost as far as the eye could see, the forest stretched east. To the north were the foothills with cloud-topped mountains beyond; to the south, Hogwarts, and to the west, Hogsmeade and their home. Looking for Persephone beneath the dense blanket of green that lay beneath her would be as exigent as searching the world for another philosopher's stone.

"Merlin, I need some help!" she muttered under her breath, anxiously scanning the treetops for the smallest sign of disturbance that might betray her daughter's presence somewhere below. She suspected that the forest would not appreciate the girl's intrusion, particularly since she would probably be bent on testing her new-found powers wherever, and on whatever, she could.

She noticed a place, deep in the forest, where the trees did not seem so thickly packed, and she thought that perhaps if she were to land and cast a Revealing spell, the Fates might smile on her and show her in which direction Persephone could be found. Sure enough there was a clearing there, a space almost circular and eerily verdant. As Ella made her descent the air became heavy and she held her breath. Fleetingly, she thought to be afraid; certainly her husband, had he been by her side, would have urged caution and pulled up on the broom in order to surge back up into the sky and safety. But Ella felt nothing but mild apprehension, and as she dismounted even that melted away as she turned to take in her surroundings.

Time slowed and became oppressive, making her movements sluggish and her head thick with heat and heady fragrances. The air was filled with magic, so much that she felt stifled by it even as she welcomed its embrace. It was pressing her into the verdant moss that lay beneath her feet, it was lifting her spirit until she wanted to sing with joy. She could smell jasmine and roses, innocence and purity and knowledge all intermingled in synaesthetic bliss. She knew of only one animal in the forest whose power could cast so beguiling a spell.

The unicorn threaded its way between the tall trees, passing in and out of sight but never hesitating despite its natural wariness. Behind it followed a creature similar in design but more than twice its size, its hooves crackling the fallen leaves beneath its feet, breaking the silence of the forest's bated breath.

Ella's voice echoed in her mind as if the words she spoke had been snatched from her throat and cast away into a distant breeze.

"Firenze? Is that you?"

The centaur raised a finger to his lips as the unicorn stopped. "Do not speak, Ella Snape. He remembers well and would do the same again, but he listens to your soul, not your words. Do you trust me, Ella Snape?"

She nodded mutely, drugged into lethargy by the magic that irradiated the clearing and yet in full control of her mental faculties. There was more than one unicorn in the forest, she knew, for she and her husband had been granted propitious sight of two of them on the night of their wedding, but she was sure that this was the one who had given freely of its blood in order to complete the potion Ella had used to perform the ritual to remove Severus' Dark Mark. If Firenze had escorted this same unicorn now, to this wondrous clearing, when Ella and her husband were so desperately in need of pure, white magic to counteract the blackness seeping into their daughter's soul, then her trust of him was not in question.

"Bring her here. It is not yet too late."

The unicorn dipped its head as if in agreement, and whinnied softly before turning away and melting back into the shadows, while Firenze entered the clearing and drew closer to Ella.

"I don't know where she is!" Ella whispered, the urgency of her remark deadened by the torpor of the slowly dissipating magic.

The centaur looked up into the sky, examining the strata that layered the blue in shades of white.

"Travel north a little way," he said. "She has taken a circuitous path in order to avoid this clearing and so does not make as much progress as she otherwise might." He turned impassive eyes back on Ella. "Return before twilight, on the cusp of day and night."

"Thank you," she said sincerely, mounting her broom as the last vestiges of soporific magic cleared from her head, and she kicked off, speeding into the sky.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Twenty six so far, Persephone mused. That was if she were to count the two snails whose shells she had compressed with just a glance, and the frog whose body had inflated until it was the size of a football. She looked at the heap of corpses at the foot of the oak tree. Not a bad tally for an hour or so's work, and she was becoming quite skilled in her execution of the spells. _Execution_. She sniggered at the inadvertent play on words. How very apt!

The smirk soon died on her face, though. She was becoming rather bored, and it was time she set her sights on a greater challenge. Determined, she got to her feet and kicked the small body of a shrew to one side as she made her way towards the sound of a babbling stream. Perhaps she would see some tracks there that she could follow. There were all sorts of creatures in the Forbidden Forest, Hagrid had spent hours talking to her about them, and she knew she would be able to find deer if she looked carefully enough.

She felt a sudden flash of remorse as she thought of the kindly groundskeeper. He would be horrified if he were to find out what she was doing. He'd probably cry, and wipe away his tears with that tablecloth-sized red and white handkerchief he kept in his pocket. Hot tears threatened to fall from her own eyes as she remembered being dandled on his knee when she was little, feeling so very small that she might as well have been her favourite doll, her long, coltish legs swinging as she sat on his strong, wide thigh, perfectly balanced and quite, quite safe. Apart from her daddy – her _father_ – he was her favourite man in the world, and this was how she was applying the lessons he had so assiduously taught her.

From the corner of her eyes she saw a blurred black shape streaking through the sky low over the treetops. She crumpled to the ground then and sobbed, hiding her head in her hands, shuddering as the blood began once more to heat her veins.

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Snape reached Ella eventually, having been able to monitor her fruitless search as he himself had neared the forest. He had watched as she hovered and swooped, systematically covering a sweeping area of the forest as it reached the foothills of the mountains, grimly approving of her thoroughness. As he reached her side he matched his speed and height to hers and when she was in earshot asked,

"Why this particular area?"

"Firenze," she replied. "There was a unicorn, Severus! We have to find her and take her to the clearing by dusk!"

"What clearing?"

"The one where we saw the two unicorns on the night of our wedding, remember? At least, I think it's the same clearing!"

"Then keep looking," he said. "I'll take this segment, you fan out your search that way." He indicated an area of densely packed woodland to the northeast of their position.

As Ella dropped lower and banked to the right, he held his course. The canopy was patchy in this part of the forest where a good half of the trees were deciduous, and he could get a fairly good view of the forest floor as he flew. There was nothing there but dead leaves and moss, though, and it did not take long for his frustration to mount.

This was all his fault, his and his alone. If he had never been seduced by the siren song of Lucius Malfoy all those years ago, if he had been less bookish and more approachable, if he had been a different man, a different child…

If only he had lived a different life.

No. He should know far better than most never to second-guess the Fates. Their design was woven into the fabric of Existence, and any alteration to the warp or weft of it would unravel countless lives, perhaps ruining them in the process. If he had not made the choices he had, heinous though some of them were, he might never have met his wife, never even have fathered Persephone. Such a thing was unthinkable. This was his life, their lives, and they played the game with the cards the wily Fates had dealt them. He had always played to win and he saw no reason for that to change now.

The late afternoon sun glowed orange, and he caught a flicker of it as it danced on the surface of the small brook that meandered through this part of the forest. Its banks were the perfect environment for the lythrum salicaria that thrived at this part of the year, and he could not help but search for its familiar purple foliage as he skimmed the treetops, since he had always harvested it at this time of year.

At last his diligence was rewarded, but by something far closer to his heart than potential stocks for his storeroom. He saw a heart-stoppingly familiar shape huddled on the forest floor. Quelling the urge to call to her, he set an unobtrusive Containment charm with a perimeter around ten yards of its target, just in case she should decide to continue her journey while his back was turned. One could never be too careful where children were concerned, as he well knew. Once satisfied that she would not be able to stray from the immediate area, he looked around for Ella and, seeing her in the middle distance, set his broom towards her to tell her their search was over.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They set down as quietly as they could behind Persephone and a few feet outside the containment bubble. She did not notice their presence and they heard the faint sound of sobbing. Ella moved forward but Snape held her back, taking her arm and whispering "Finite Incantatem." He glanced down at her anxious face and nodded slightly as he released her, and they both started towards their daughter.

"Seffie, sweetheart, are you alright?" Ella called gently, not knowing quite what to expect. The sobs became louder and Persephone's shoulders began to shake, and Ella's instinct took over as she ran to her daughter's side, kneeling beside her on the forest floor and taking her in her arms. "We've been so worried about you! Where are you going?"

"I don't know! I don't know, anywhere! Anywhere as long as it isn't St Mungo's!"

Ella turned to look at her husband angrily. He ought to have set a ward on the study door to prevent Persephone from eavesdropping. He was usually so vigilant! He caught the accusation in her eyes and felt a flash of indignation as, yet again, Ella assumed that she had a monopoly on concern and fear and desperation. Why could she not have set the wards herself? Why did she always abrogate her responsibility and leave it to him? Was he not allowed to be fallible?

The moment stretched and he held his breath. To back down was unthinkable; to stand his ground might have consequences he dared not contemplate. Fortunately the decision was taken out of his hands as Ella closed her eyes and bent her head to her daughter's. Persephone leaned in to her for a moment and then in a quavering voice said, "Daddy?"

He reached them in three easy strides. "Seffie, you must come with us," he said firmly. "Now."

"Daddy, will you roll your sleeve up, please?"

"What?" he breathed.

She straightened and rose to her feet, uncoiling her limbs in one fluid, serpentine motion, and he recoiled as she turned someone else's red eyes on him.

"Ella, come here," he murmured, his left arm reaching out towards his wife as he took his wand in his right hand. "Come away from her."

Sensing a change in her daughter, Ella complied at once, and once she was safely out of range Snape re-cast the Containment charm. The thing inside Persephone made her throw back her head and laugh, a shrill, high laugh that froze their blood and turned their stomachs.

"What have you done with my daughter, my Lord?" he asked.

"You dare to call me such, when this strumpet fucked you so hard that my Mark was expunged from your soul and excised from your flesh?"

"What would you rather I called you?"

"_Master!_ I would rather you called me Master, and then I would rather you died at my feet, writing in agony! _Crucio_!"

The spell was weak, performed as it was without a wand and through the medium of an inexperienced child, but nevertheless Snape felt a painful tingling course through his veins, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

"She's cast an Unforgiveable!" Ella muttered. "The unicorn will refuse her now, surely!"

"Ssh, woman! Take your wand and be of some use to me!" he replied distractedly.

"Unicorn?" the shell of their daughter replied. "Ah, fresh unicorn blood! It has been long since I drank of such nectar! Take me to the unicorn, if that is your wish. I will be glad of its succour!"

"Restrain her, Ella. Now!"

Ella pointed her wand at her daughter and shouted, "Petrificus Totalis!"

The girl froze, and Snape stopped her fall with an almost instantaneous "Mobilicorpus!"

"What do we do now?" Ella asked. "She – he – _wants_ to go to the clearing! What if this is all he needs to fully regain his power? We'll be playing right into his hands!"

"No," Snape said, walking around the stiff form of his daughter, her feet several inches from the ground and her eyes on a level with his own. "Look at her eyes. Look at the tears."

It was true. Persephone's eyes had lost their red cast and shone brilliant green with unshed tears. As they watched, her eyes overflowed and a small rivulet was formed on each cheek. Snape reached his hand to her face and wiped away a tear with his thumb.

"Remarkable," he said softly. "See how she fights not only the Petrificus you cast, but also _his_ control of her?"

"She's always been strong-willed," Ella managed, her voice choked. Snape turned to his wife and put his hand on the small of her back, stroking gently as he pulled her to him and planting a kiss on her head.

"It's almost dusk," he noted. "Come."


	11. A Victory

**Chapter 11**

_**A Victory**_

Ella hovered over the clearing, which glowed with a pure bluish light so bright that she could scarcely see the shadowy outlines of the creatures flitting between the close-packed trees. She dropped down slightly, peering into the shadows until her eyes became accustomed to the glare, aware that her husband and daughter were also making their descent behind her.

There were centaurs there, ringing the clearing like sentinels, and a knot of fear tightened in her stomach. She cast about for some sign of Firenze, but could not make him out. Steeling her nerve, she descended until her feet touched the springy turf and then turned in a slow circle to take in all of those who had gathered. Snape landed beside her and let Persephone down from his broom, keeping his arm around her waist even as Ella's went protectively round her shoulder.

No one spoke, the humans too wary and the centaurs too calculating. Each one had turned his penetrating, otherworldly gaze on the girl in the middle of the clearing, the interloper. Finally, they spoke.

"She is here…"

"And so is he…

"What do we care?"

"Care we must..."

"He shall devour…"

"If we do not allow this…"

"To expend such purity on one such as he…"

"Yet one such as she, born of redemption, is pure in her way…"

"Tainted now…"  
"But not beyond redemption herself." These last words were spoken as Firenze entered the clearing. His hoof pawed the ground angrily as he raised his melodic voice and cried to the heavens, "For is it not written in the moon and the stars that the final ending to the discordant song of a monstrous life was not final, and a sweet coda must be appended here tonight?"

"Then proceed we must," replied a gruff voice, and through murmurs of grudging assent the unicorns emerged. Centaurs shifted to grant them access to the circle and the clearing glowed brighter than bright, Snape and Ella shielding their eyes as much from the wonder of it as from its intensity. Only Persephone seemed unaffected, standing proud and tall and shaking off her parents' protection. Ella glanced at her worriedly, fearful that the blue light would take on a sickening reddish tinge, but then she saw tears falling from her daughter's eyes and she knew that Voldemort hid deeply within her at that moment, perhaps biding his time, perhaps weakened by the waves of pure, white magic emanating from the beautiful creatures that looked so sorrowful and yet so assured.

There were five unicorns. Ella could hardly breathe, enveloped as she was in wonder. She reached out blindly for her husband's hand and, as she found it, he grasped her tightly and she knew in that moment that they were as one, always had been and would be again. His strength comforted and calmed her and she waited, suspended in time while the air all around them seemed to shimmer and eddy with possibilities. It was a living, sentient thing, an essence of power distilled deep within the secretive forest and now released here, and she trusted in its beneficence. For the first time since Persephone's abduction, Ella allowed herself to hope.

XXX

Persephone Snape. Tom Riddle. Lord Voldemort. Persephone Snape. Seething, roiling blood, bubbling beneath her conscious mind now, wheedling and twisting, promising power and glory and dread delight. Over it all, banking down the flames and blanketing it with cooling snow, white and perfect, the crystalline marvel of pure, innocent strength, calming and soothing…and melting away as foulness reasserted itself, rising up and breaking through her mental barriers, laughing its high, shrill laugh, forcing her head back and her throat to tighten in an eldritch shriek,

"Did you think me so weak? Did you defy me even in that?"

The girl that was not Persephone flung herself forward with a growl, long thin arms growing preternaturally longer as she reached out, bones cracking and sinews stretching as Ella and Snape sprang forward to grasp at her, pulling her back from the closest unicorn, which had reared back in fright.

"Persephone, no!" Ella cried, but Snape said,

"It is not Persephone!" as he turned the snarling girl to face him, her eyes glowing red in her white face, her mouth a mere slit with bloodless lips.

"Stop!" sounded a stentorian voice from the shadows. "Let us end it here!"

The gathered centaurs pawed the ground in assent. "End it!"

XXX

Backing up against her daughter and husband as they stood locked in time, and trying to protect them from what she perceived as the centaurs' intent, Ella was terrified. Centaurs had never been friends of men, living alongside them out of necessity but always at a distance. Firenze was but one centaur, and she could not expect his protection when he was outnumbered twenty-fold. Despite their vague prophesies and the hopefulness she had felt at hearing them, all she could foresee now was the sound of skulls splitting as she and her loved ones were trampled to death beneath those formidable hooves. Never mind her self-centred interpretation of their earlier words; they meant to kill her daughter, and she and her husband would surely perish in their attempts to save her.

Defiance withered and died locked in her throat, though, as fear silenced her. The stampede never came; the centaurs merely advanced into the circle a little more, shepherding in the timid unicorns and thus drawing in with them the light and concentrating it still further.

Ella's breathing slowed a little and she swallowed, watching the unicorns nervously. The largest caught her eye, and at once she recognised it as the one whose blood she had taken eleven years before, for the poultice that had healed her husband. There was such knowledge in those still, dark eyes, and she gazed into their depths once more as she had done so long ago. Such wisdom, such purity and understanding that Ella began to weep silently without even realising it.

After a while, the unicorn snickered slightly, its warm breath steaming the cool blue air and gently breaking the link between them with its gauzelike substanceless curtain. It moved to one side, the smallest of the unicorns coming forward to take its place.

"Take the bowl, Ella," said Firenze softly. "It is time, for the stars stud the heavens and the girl child has been drenched long enough in her pain."

Ella took the shallow bowl that hovered before her, and held it out to the smallest unicorn. It lowered its head in assent and presented its flank to her, pressing against the side of the bowl. Ella dared not move as the air grew heavy around her. The forest was holding its breath, and she knew that when it released it once more, the world would be changed forever. She closed her eyes, feeling understanding and rightness flood through her as the unicorn's flank bled into her bowl, sharing its life essence to save her daughter, itself and all of its kind.

The pressure against the bowl lifted and she sensed the unicorn move away. Opening her eyes, Ella watched as the wound in its side closed and healed away, leaving no sign of its sacrifice and its boon. The bowl was far from full, but unicorn blood was the most potent magic known to man, and she knew that if Persephone was to be healed, then what she held before her would suffice.

She turned to her husband and daughter and held out the bowl. "She needs to drink it, Severus."

"Are you sure? Must it be prepared in some way?"

"Yes. And no…she must drink it in its purest form, as it has been offered."

Persephone shrank from her mother, shaking her head.

"No, I can't! It's blood, mum! I can't drink that!"

Ella almost sagged with relief. If her daughter was being wilful and refusing the blood out of squeamishness, their job would be so much easier. If she had been in Voldemort's thrall at that moment, she would probably have relished drinking from the bowl, absorbing its magic and corrupting it for his own purpose, incurring the anger of the centaurs with all of the repercussions that would entail.

No. Persephone would take her medicine at once. As her mother, Ella would insist on it.

"You will take this, Seffie, and you will drink every last drop. You know very well what will happen if you don't."

"Mum!"

"Listen to her, Persephone," insisted her father. "You must do this."

XXXXX

Persephone looked at the centaurs that set a silent cordon around the glade. Their faces were impassive enough, but she could tell that they were judging her. She shivered, and looked between her parents. They were implacable, that much was obvious. For a wild, giddy moment she was reminded of the day they had been called to Hogsmeade School to see Miss Lovegood. They had made her apologise for the hinkypunk incident in front of the whole school, and even though she had been mortified she had still wanted to laugh. She knew that if she laughed now it would come out as a sob, and she felt too afraid of the strange forest creatures to make any sort of sound at all.

There was also the incontrovertible proof that they were right. She had to drink the blood, because it was the only way she could rid herself of the diseased presence that kept tightening its death grip on her soul. Moreover, she had to do it now, while the bright, pure magic generated in the glade kept that presence cowed and in retreat. If it asserted itself now, she would be powerless to resist it

_It could offer her so much…_

She clamped down on that thought and stepped forward decisively, opening her mouth to affirm that she would do as they asked. No words came, and her hands were trembling, but she held them out to take the bowl from her mother, meeting her concerned gaze with her own fearful one.

It was warm, and there were still bubbles in it. Celsus would love this, she thought sardonically. He would be jumping up and down at her side, exclaiming in that childish voice of his, poking his finger into the bowl to see what it felt like. Anguish lanced through her as she remembered all that she had done to him of late, and she resolved to tell him how sorry she was. Suddenly determined, she brought the bowl to her lips and drank it down in draught after draught of deep gulps, screwing shut her eyes as if the lack of one sense would somehow dull the rest; the coppery taste, the sickly-sweet smell and the sound of her own life-blood pounding and screaming through her ears.

At last it was done, and she dropped the bowl as she fell into a swoon.

When she awoke, her parents were crouched at her side and it was dark. They were alone. She was alone, too; there was no-one else inside her.

"Mummy, Daddy? Am I okay?"

"Yes, love, you're fine now," her mother said, a sob catching in her throat. Her father let out a breath that he must have been holding for some time, because it was ragged and loud in the stillness that surrounded them.

"What happened? After I'd…gods, that was so gross."

Snape sat down on the grass beside her. "Well, I have certainly never experienced its like before…nor am I likely to again, if the Fates are kind!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Persephone asked, sitting up and settling back into her mother's embrace.

"It means that the magic here tonight has been - successful?" He looked across at Ella enquiringly and she nodded, her face breaking into a wide smile.

"I can feel that he's gone. It's like…like when you come out of the bathroom after a really hot bath, and you're all glowing and wrapped up in soft towels. Do you know what I mean?" she asked.

"Yes, we know," Snape murmured, remembering his wedding night when Ella had used all the magic at her disposal, including that of the phoenix and the unicorn, to expunge his Dark Mark. "After you had drunk the gift, you fainted," he continued carefully, "which was probably for the best…because the expulsion of the canker in your body was somewhat traumatic."

"I don't remember much," she confessed. "I remember shaking hard, and then it was as if my skin was turning itself inside out! It _didn't_, did it?"

"No, Seffie, it didn't," Ella said, "But you did begin to shake and fit, and we watched as you – well, there was some red smoke, it rose off you and the light in the glade just consumed it, and there was a shrill wailing as he – _it_ – left you."

Persephone shivered, and her father removed his cloak and reached over to wrap it around her shoulders. "Come on," he said firmly, getting to his feet. "The forest is no place to linger at night. We must take you home."

"Have they all gone now?" she asked. "The centaurs, and the unicorns?"

"As soon as they were satisfied that the evil had been banished, they left, but that doesn't mean they now owe us their protection. They are the most enigmatic of creatures and generally refuse to interfere in the ways of men. We cannot count on their intervention in future, if it has no bearing on their own interests."

"And besides," said Ella in an attempt to lighten the sombre mood, "there's someone waiting to see you back at home."

Persephone hung her head. "I was horrid to Celsus, wasn't I?"

"No more than you have always been," replied her father dryly, straddling his broom and lifting her easily in front of him.


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Nothing was easy, and everything came at a price. Persephone had been exposed to more dark magic than any eleven-year-old ought ever to suffer, and of course it would leave its mark on her psyche. Such were her father's brooding thoughts as he sat in his library and listened through the open window to the cheerful shouts of his son as he played in the orchard outside. She was outside too, sitting in the shade of an apple tree and reading a book she had chosen from his collection a few minutes before.

She had been too pale, too haunted and still wary of herself. Snape could see it in her eyes, recognising the regret, the sorrow and the resignation that nothing would ever be wholly innocent now. The purity of the unicorn and the naivete of her childhood were now moments in time, suspended in the aspic of memory and never to be experienced again. Such realisation was hard to bear for one so young, and he wished she had been spared the lesson.

He heard Ella's voice then, calling Celsus inside, and the thundering of the child's feet as he sped past the window and into the kitchen. He knew that Ella sensed the change in Persephone too, although they did not speak of it. There was little that they did speak of nowadays, in fact. By unspoken agreement they had drawn a line under what had happened and the wedge it had driven between them, and now they were living alongside one another but not fully together, blindly groping their way back to one another and trying to ignore the barbs from both sides that had pierced and scratched their love. He felt the loss of her keenly now that he had the time to devote to her, and not for the first time he wondered how it had come to pass.

XXX

Ella made Celsus take the cup of pumpkin juice she had poured him, and the sandwich she had made, and he ran back outside with them, roaring his way down the garden before collapsing in a heap near to his sister and setting about his lunch with gusto. Ella watched him and smiled, before her gaze shifted across to the place where her daughter sat pallid in the dappled shade, and her face became pensive.

Persephone was well, she knew deep down in her heart; the unicorn had freed her from all taint. Still, she knew from her experience with Severus in the months after their marriage that even scars that had been expunged needed time to heal.

Ah, Severus. He was in the next room, separated from her by only a wall; but another wall existed now, tall and thick, and they had to find a way to break it down or they would never regain themselves.

It was her fault, she freely admitted it. Her neuroses had constructed barriers of varying sizes and strengths throughout their eleven-year marriage, and he had allowed it because he did not know any other way to be other than accepting of her. He loved her. He loved her so much that he had colluded with her for years, letting her behaviour dictate the course of their marriage.

She touched the emerald that hung from its fine gold chain at her breast, warm from its contact with her skin. She could barely remember when she had stopped wearing it, even less why. Taking it in her hand, she looked into it and murmured the familiar incantation, "Mirror mirabilis," and there he was. Her heart skipped a beat, feeling as if it was twisting and struggling to escape its confines, and her eyes filled with tears. How had it come to this, with each of them dealing with this uncertain aftermath separately and apart?

Absently, she stroked the stone with the side of her thumb as if she was caressing his cheek. She watched as he stood and reached over to the mantle, lifting down the statuette she had bought him, the same Christmas he had bought her the emerald. Their first Christmas together, so very long ago, and yet she remembered each and every detail as if it had just happened. He set the entwined figures down on his writing desk and she watched as it came to life, an achingly poignant representation of their two selves as they had appeared almost twelve years before.

They had been through so much since that day. _She_ had put them through so much. Everyone who had known them at the time they met had assumed that Severus would be the difficult one in their relationship, but once she had broken down his defences it had not been that way at all. No, not at all.

He had never been anything but devoted in his silent intensity, while she, who had loved him more than life and as deeply as he loved her, had inflicted on him her moods, her neuroses and the subsequent vacillation of her affections. He had endured all of these with stoic acceptance and if he had shown his irritation these last few weeks, when both of them were under such unbearable pressure, then he had had every right.

She wondered at how he had kept his patience with her so long. Perhaps if he had shown his displeasure sooner, she might have sought help. Too many times during their life together, she had been distracted from their love, wasting precious hours, days, weeks, that they could have been wrapped in one another, the way they used to be. Why, when such utter devotion came as naturally to her as breathing, had she allowed herself to use him so ill?

XXX

The couple gazed into one another's smiling eyes, twining together, touching and caressing. The taller bent his head to the lower to steal a kiss, the lower wound her fingers through the taller's hair.

Ah, how he loved her to do that to him. How he loved her.

The sound of laughter and a girl's clear voice calling distracted Snape from the dancing figures for a moment, and he looked out through the window to see his son sharing his sandwich with his older sister, in the shade of the apple tree. Persephone sat cross-legged now, holding her half of the generous doorstep with both hands, elbowing Celsus in the ribs as he bounced on his heels beside her.

"Finite incantatem," he murmured, and the figures stilled, freezing back to lapis and marble in a tender embrace.

He needed his wife back. He could function without her, it was true, for while he had never been parted from her in body in the years since their marriage, there were other more invidious types of absence, and they had been subject to too many of those. He had endured them because he could not do otherwise. It was not so much that he had feared the irretrievable breakdown of their marriage; rather, he had been afraid that criticism on his part, once begun, would never stop, and some things can never be unspoken. So he had stayed his tongue for love of her, and in so doing had colluded with the sometimes wakeful demons that had always slept within her, his tacit acceptance nurturing her neuroses and allowing them to run her life and ruin their otherwise perfect happiness.

He had been wrong. If he had been more outspoken in the early days of their relationship then maybe the slow burning exasperation that her behaviour had ignited would never have resulted in the flashpoint of ill humour that had caused her to slap him across his face the week before, when Persephone's wellbeing was still in the balance.

Too late now, to take back the barbed comments and erase the hurt, and impossible to forget the look in her eyes as he had belittled her feelings. She could no more help her anxieties than he could help loving her.

The latch clicked and he turned to the door to find her framed there, hesitant and flushed, her eyes wide and questioning.  
He knew what she was thinking before she even took a breath, and he was at her side in three long strides, taking her shoulders in his hands and searching her gaze for permission before enfolding her in his arms and pressing her tousled head to his chest.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Sorting Hat finished its song and those gathered in the Great Hall sat stunned for a few seconds until Professor Dumbledore began the applause. Ella felt a wholly inappropriate giggle struggle to escape her, and her shoulders shook with the effort to suppress it. She strongly suspected that the urge to laugh was hysteria caused by the stress of waiting for her daughter's Sorting rather than the exceptional wit of the Hat, and she reached for her husband's hand. He squeezed her fingers briefly and murmured,

"Don't worry. If she _is_ sorted into Slytherin, I shall be there to ensure she follows the right path."

"And you won't mind if she's a Ravenclaw:

"If she takes after her mother? I dare say I will survive the shame," he replied dryly.

XXX

"Persephone Snape!"

Professor McGonagall's precise enunciation of the name ensured that every head in the school turned to watch the daughter of the fearsome Potions master step on to the stage. Persephone looked straight ahead as she approached the three-legged stool on which she was to sit to hear her fate, not daring to dart even the quickest of glances towards the High Table. She did not wish to disappoint either of them, and although they had tried to tell her that even if she were to be sorted into Hufflepuff she would make them proud, still she dreaded the Hat's verdict.

She sat down, a curious sea of faces appraising her. Frowning in unconscious imitation of her father, she placed her hands on her knees as Professor McGonagall placed the Hat on her head.

It was far too big for her, and it came down so far over her eyes that she had to squeeze them shut, else the felted fabric irritate her. As she did so, she heard breathing and gentle humming as the Hat made its deliberations.

"Hmm, interesting…" it said. "There's cunning here, and ambition, no doubt about that…a thirst for knowledge…Two houses would suit you well enough, and you would thrive…but there's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there? Hmm?"

"Er…" Persephone started, uncertain as to whether she was supposed to enter into negotiations with the Sorting Hat. Surely it should have made its decision as soon as it had been placed on her head?"

"Brave for one so young, and triumphant over suffering…courage is here, and determination, and selflessness…better be Gryffindor!"

The Hat finished its deliberations with a shout, and McGonagall lifted it from her head to wild applause from the Gryffindor table.

Breaking into a smile, Persephone Snape left the dais and joined her fellow housemates, accepting their congratulations as she looked up at last to the High Table, where her mother and her father sat gaping in surprise.

FIN


End file.
